Brad Collins works for the Poison Control Center.  He keeps note of calls
that are particularly unusual, funny or weird.  Here are some of his latest:

Caller:"Will it make you sterile if you dye your pubic hair?"
Brad: "Who wants to dye their pubic hair?"
Caller: "I do"
Brad: "And why would you want to do this?" 
Caller: "It'd be cool!"
Brad:  I couldn't argue with that.  But I really blew it by not asking what color.
Also, it was a GUY who wanted to do this.

A 17 year old girl called because she's pregnant (no, she wasn't looking for
me) and she ate an ant.  She's worried that it will seek out her unborn and 
destroy it.  (Just think, if that were possible, then we would have all these 
Right-to-Life wackos picketing and blowing up anthills.)
Yes, it's a beautiful world we live in.  I must sit back, take a deep breath
and ponder the significance of being a 17 year old girl.

This guy calls saying that his 14-year-old son has been taking anabolic
steroids for "most of his life" and has had increased penis growth and
continuous erections.  He goes on to say that his son's penis measures
29 inches.  My coworker Jen was quick to point out that this is the length
of another coworker's (Kenny) inseam.  I'm thinking that this guy has to
be lying and if he's not, I want to be the kid's agent.  Hell, he should have
a flashing red light on the end of his dick to warn low flying aircraft
when he gets an erection.  He then said that his son's physician said that
this was normal and that it's probably "hereditary."  Oh yeah, the kid's
name is Dave.

Here it is Christmas Eve Eve and I get a call from the police about a
brother and sister who are having a fight (probably has something to do
with that damn Tickle Me Elmo doll).  It seems she was trying to stab him
with a knife and to get back at her he put five lithium capsules in her Coke. 
Who knows what will be in her stocking on Christmas morning?

It's the early evening and this gentleman calls describing how he got up
that morning and went out to the kitchen to find a bowl of what he believed 
to be cereal.  It was still dark and he decided to eat it without any lights 
on (this actually happens quite often, why?  I have no idea, I typically like 
to see what I'm eating).  He put milk on it, ate it, went to work, and now is 
home to find out that his wife had seen a rat the night before and put out a 
bowl of D-Con Mouse Prufe II (rat and mouse poison) on the counter to hopefully 
get rid of the critter.  So it turns out that what he thought was cereal in the 
morning was actually rat poison.  We encouraged him to visit with his physician, 
which he did, and is now doing fine.  This story also proves a point I've made 
several times.  If you put enough brown sugar on anything, it will be edible 
(actually my quote is "you put enough brown sugar on a dog turd, and it will 
taste pretty good", I have no interest in proving this though).

So this woman is telling me about these invisible people in her house who
keep eating all her food (once again, I curse the fact that I'm already
married, and she's probably really cute too!).  She had this great plan to
get rid of them.  She put Clorox bleach (showing great wisdom here avoiding
a generic brand) in a glass of Coke and left it out hoping they would drink
it and it would kill them (bleach is lethal to those of the invisible
persuasion).  A day went by and she had forgotten about putting the bleach
in the Coke and drank it.  Luckily, because of her visibility, it didn't
kill her and she lives to this day to hunt the little invisible bastards
down.  I suggested leaving out a piece of crushed glass on toast for them.

Whenever it snows (like it is now) we get a lot of calls here at the Poison
Center looking for the Highway Patrol and road conditions. The problem is
the US WORST phone book. On the front cover our number is listed (as it
should be); but in the same area they've listed Police, Fire, and Highway
Patrol with spaces to write the number of the service closest to where
you live. Since we cover the whole state, ours is the only number listed.
We pointed this out to them last year, but when the new phone books came out, 
they were the SAME!  What really amazes me is that we answer the phone "Poison 
Control Center" and the person will just start asking about highway conditions 
or "is this the Highway Patrol?" "Why yes it is, that's why I answered the 
phone POISON CONTROL CENTER!"  I'm getting to the point that when someone asks 
for the highway conditions I say in my most excited homosexual male voice "It's 
snowing and there's cars all over the place!" People still have no clue, and that's
why I love them so much.

This woman calls me telling me that she has breast implants. Just as I was
about to tell her that this wasn't the Highway Patrol she proceeded to tell
me that she'd been cleaning her oven and now her breasts are stimulated and
she's sure it's the oven cleaner she's using. I told her that the implants
were a failure if she's still cleaning her own oven. She then proceeded to
explain to me in detail about the "tingling" of her breasts, especially
right between her breasts. Right about now I started feeling like this call
was costing me a fortune ($19.95 initial fee and $4.95 per minute) and
figured I better go help another caller. 

A Mom just called wanting to know if it's OK for her two- and four-year-old
to play with bullets (I guess the knives are dirty).

I just finished a seven-day graveyard stretch which usually produces many
strange and wonderful encounters, but this week was different.  It was all
pretty routine stuff until the last night, Sunday.  It was an amazing night
with non-stop callers.  My most frequently given advice for the night was
"GO TO BED!"  It was this night, though, that made the whole week worthwhile.

First I get a call from a woman who told me that she and her two children
had head lice.  She said she went to the store to buy shampoo to rid them of
the little bastards, but she thought the shampoos were too expensive.  A
friend of hers from Mexico (why it matters that she was from Mexico I can't
figure, but she made a point out of telling me three times that this is
where her advice came from) told her an inexpensive way to eliminate the
free loaders.  So instead of the shampoo, she bought a can of Raid Ant and
Roach (gee, it says nothing on the label about head lice) and sprayed her
head and the heads of her two children.  She was calling to tell me that now
all their heads were burning (good thing they didn't have crabs).  She
couldn't understand what had gone wrong.  She'd checked the labels and they
both had the same active ingredients, but she'd failed to notice that the
Raid contained petroleum distillates which is basically like washing your
hair with gasoline.  Now their scalps were on fire, but her big question was
"is this going to kill the lice?"

This next experience is another dream come true.  Along with pancakes I
kinda gotta thing for Tang (you know, the drink that went to the moon and
tastes like pool water when it's not mixed strong enough?).  Anyways, this
woman calls telling me about her son and how he has this teapot he likes to
play with and drink water out of.  She'd noticed that it was quite dirty
inside and growing things that shouldn't be in a teapot, so she put some
Clorox bleach in it to soak.  Her son came along, took his teapot downstairs
and mixed up Tang with what he thought was water inside.  He then took a
couple of swallows of the teeth whitening drink and decided that it didn't
taste too good. So now he's off to complain to his Mother that something is
wrong with his Tang.  She's now convinced that her son is going to be
severely damaged by this new drink.  I convinced her that he would be fine
and felt pretty bad for the little fellow until I asked her how old he was.
"Forty-five," she said.

Ohhhh how I love pancakes!  It's always been a mystery to me why you can
never make a pancake at home that tastes as good as the ones you get at a
restaurant. For some reason I'd always considered the pancake a universal
food (probably because of the propaganda spread by the International House
of Pancakes) but I was wrong.  I have a friend in Germany who doesn't know
what a pancake is.  So how come you can go to the local IHOP and get a
German pancake, but if you go to Germany they have no idea what the hell
you're talking about?  I've discovered that many other European countries have
their version of the pancake, nothing quite like what you can get at Denny's
though.

Anyways, it was a dream come true when I got a call from a woman who said
that somebody had put diesel fuel in a syrup bottle and her husband put it
on his pancakes and ATE IT!  I think this may have been his version of
German pancakes.

So this guy calls saying his fiance ate a Slurpee that smelled like vomit (I
can't figure why they're not married already).  While he's telling me this
story I had this vision of a guy stuck working at 7-11 while he's sick.
The customers are harassing him and now he has to puke. There's no way he'll
make it to the can, but the Slurpee machine is very handy. Vision over. "So
your fiance thought the Slurpee smelled like vomit and she ate it anyways?"
"uhhhhhhhhhhh, yup"  Friends, this is true love.  Now I challenge each of
you to go out and find it.

I got a call from a woman saying that she opened a jar of jam and it looked,
smelled and tasted bad.  So she decided to give it to HER COW!  The day
after she did so, her cow died.  Now I really doubt the cow's death  had
anything to do with the jam, but this does lead us to Brad's Poison Rule
#34: If something looks, smells and tastes bad, DON'T FEED IT TO YOUR ANIMALS!

A colleague of mine got a call from a woman about a can of tomato sauce that
exploded when she opened it.  This was no small explosion.  In fact the
velocity was so great it hit the ceiling.  So what did she do with this
sauce?  SHE MADE LASAGNA!  Now she's calling wondering if it's OK to eat it.
After discussing the joys of botulism and other food related illnesses, she
decided not to eat it.  Just when you thought the world was safe from killer
lasagna, About a half hour later I got a call from a guy who says "My
neighbor brought over this lasagna for me.  She says that the sauce may be
bad, but she thinks it's OK.  I put it in the oven and cranked it up
figuring it would kill anything growing in it.  Do you think it's OK to
eat?"  Sure, why not? In fact you probably don't need to worry about
refrigerating the leftovers.  Bon appetito!

I got a call from a Mom who entered the living room to find her two-year-old
twins snacking on the cremated remains of Grandpa.  It seems that setting 
the urn at the base of the fireplace was not a great idea.  I think it's
great when children take an interest in their ancestors.

I got a call from a woman who said she found a bottle of apple juice in her
car so she put it in her fridge.  Today her 10-month-old daughter has had
two 8 ounce bottles of the juice.  Her boyfriend just came home to tell her
that he and some friends had taken the car on a road trip the day before and
instead of stopping they used an empty apple juice bottle to relieve
themselves into.  The child was fine, but I got sick.

This woman calls complaining that "Mexican Devil Worshipers" are following
her (not necessarily a bad thing). She went on to say that every time she
left her house they'd come in and bang on her pipes under her sink (The Old
Guy in the Boat?).  She has all of this on audio tape but not video (there
seemed to be a problem with the tapes being mono and not stereo).  She's
pretty sure that they are putting poison in her pipes, but not sure what
kind of poison.  When I told her there wasn't much I could do without
knowing what kind of poison it was she shifted gears into another topic
asking "What kind of smoke do UFO's use to knock people out?  When I was 14,
a friend and I were knocked out by smoke from a UFO (probably exhaust from
some rock group's van).  We were taken aboard the UFO and medically
examined."  She went on to say that they were on mescaline at the time, but
knows she didn't hallucinate this because they were knocked out and "you
know mescaline doesn't do that!"  At this point I cursed the fact that I was
married because I was pretty sure I was in love.

Diary notes from callers:

"What should you do if you have germs in your body?"

"Can you tell me what this pill is?  It says TYLENOL 325 on it."

(this one's not a question, but it seems to belong here) "An electric beetle
tried to murder a Jehovah's Witness today *click* (my money's on Ringo)

"What if a fly lands on your dog's poop and then your dog licks the poop and
then your dog licks your coffee cup and then you drink out of it?"  (Man am
I glad I don't drink coffee)

"Is it OK to give my child dog vitamins?"

"Is it safe to wear underwear that is new and hasn't been washed?"

"My mucous smells like rotten meat.  What should I do?" (not expect a good
night kiss?)

"I heard it's dangerous to give children honey.  What about Honey Nut Cheerios?"
(number 3 killer of children in the U.S.)

"Can stereo speakers cause hearing damage?" (what?)

"Can I mix 2 different kinds of mothballs?" (usually with gin is OK)

"Is is OK to drink wine with amoxicillin?" (I recommend a dry red wine, like
a Merlot)

"I have some pork chops that really smell bad.  Is it OK to eat them?" (once
again I recommend the Merlot)

"I smoked marijuana two days ago and drank five gallons of water and two
gallons of juice.  Will it be detectable in a urine drug test?"  (most
juices do not show up on urine drug tests)

Why does the wallpaper remover container say to wear gloves?  (our answer was
"to protect your hands")