Warning: This Blog May Be Hazardous to Your Health (I don't know how, but it might)

I am arriving late for many of my appointments. Why? Every time I get into my car I have too many things to do. There is a sign on the visor which says, “IMPORTANT Before driving, read the label on the other side of the visor.” For some reason I am compelled to do as I’m told. Then on the other side of the visor it says, “IMPORTANT FOR YOUR SAFETY Following these instructions will greatly improve your chances of avoiding severe injury in case of an accident.” Since avoiding severe injury is right towards the top of my “To Do List” each and every day, I read it most carefully.
That alone would not make me late. The problem is at the bottom of the visor it instructs the driver to consult a section in the owner’s guide. By the time I read all that too, I might as well go back into the house because I am now horribly late for whatever compelled me to get into the car in the first place.
I know it is a dangerous world we live in. If you look around there are warnings everywhere. Coffee cups at fast food restaurants point out the contents are hot. Two liter bottles of soda point out the contents are under pressure and they should be opened with caution. I suppose the next thing will be warning labels on warning labels, after all you can get a wicked paper cut off of some of those things.
A cursory inspection of my house revealed so many imminent dangers it is a wonder I haven’t met my insurance deductible five times over. I found a hand held air pump. I purchased it to pump up a basketball. There on the side in bold red letters it reads, “Warning: designed and intended for inflating purposes only.” This is where the warning label truly needs a warning label. It would read, “Warning after reading this warning label you run the risk of wasting the next hour and half of your life trying to think of things you could use this pump for other than inflating things and what would be the intrinsic danger involved with such unauthorized activity.”
My personal favorite warning labels feature the stick figure icon of a person dealing with the worst case scenario. A while back I was helping a friend paint her house. We were using scaffolding to get to the very topmost parts. Now I am not one of the bravest folks in the land so there was no need to warn me about the danger of falling off a platform forty feet off the ground. I was so aware of the danger of falling off a platform forty feet off the ground I was often seen simply sitting on the plank and griping the iron bars so tightly my wedding ring spot welded in place. It was as I sat there, immobile due to the fear of gravity driving my head into the flower bed below, that I noticed the warning label. It not only had words describing the precautions which should be taken but it also had that poor little cartoon stick figure guy falling backwards off the little cartoon stick figure scaffolding to his little cartoon stick figure death. I am surprised there were not little cartoon stick figure pallbearers carrying a little cartoon stick figure casket past a little cartoon stick figure weeping widow as well.
Since this poor guy goes through so much in his selfless quest to help the rest of us stay safe, I decided he needed more of an identity in order to create some empathy. He is obviously bald. This may be because nobody draws hair on stick figures or it may be because he has set himself on fire so many times by not following all warning labels on cans of aerosol furniture polish. Anyway, I have named him Yul after one of the most famous bald guys ever, Yul Brenner.
Not only does the name Yul reflect his lack of hair, but it also helps him get his point across to the public. If you do not heed the warning labels Yul suffer severe injury, Yul be visited by ambulance drivers, and Yul never win the lawsuit because the insurance company lawyers will make sure Yul appear to be an imbecile of epic proportion in the eyes of the jury because you can’t even read the label telling you that using the hand held air pump to give a constipated kinkajou an enema is an unauthorized activity, etc. etc. etc….