red hot chili peppers are bad in your eyes as well

i was about to move some stuff from my old place to my new place on friday. it was garbage day and i was bringing in one of my trash cans from off the street when two guys were walking up the hill towards me. one of them asked me for 50 cents. i said "sorry" and kept going about my business. as i came back down stairs to get my other recycling can, they were still standing in front of my house. one guy said something to the other and i could tell something was about to go down. the next thing i knew, my glasses were covered in some orange-red shit. i just took them off and looked at the guy. it was some homemade shit he'd put in a plastic squirt gun. i am not sure what response they were expecting, but i just said "what the fuck is this?" and he stuck his hand in his pocket pointing it at me saying "you want some more?" i should point out that these guys were both a lot taller than me and no one else was on the street to witness this at all. i was more pissed off and just shocked that anyone would bother to do this, over 50 cents no less, or just boredom. i knew it was just a plastic squirt gun, but if someone in east oakland is trying to fuck with you and sticking something out of their shirt, it's probably a good idea to leave it alone. i just started walking towards the house so as not to drag out this confrontation and they just started laughing and walking back up the street. i tried to throw something at them but it just landed on the sidewalk. at this point, no one else was home and i tried to wash the shit off my face. bad move. although you are supposed to wash your eyes out, the fact that most of this stuff hit my glasses probably prevented me from falling to my knees right away and possibly getting rolled for my wallet that had $2 in it (ironically the same amount of money i had in my wallet when i was mugged before). but throwing water on my face just spread it all around. i was feeling an insane burn and mucous running all over. i wished i could just look up on the internet what to do to treat pepper spray, but then got more anxious about hte fact that this was some home brew ghetto mace that could have mixed anything else into that squirt gun. i ended up calling 911, barely able to see what the right buttons on my phone were. in a short burst, 3 cop cars and an ambulance rolled up. the ambulance just helped me blow my nose and then put me on the gurney thing and ran water over my eyes for a few minutes. they told me they wanted to take me to the hospital. i tried to think of a way not to go, having heard horror stories of insane bills for ambulance trips, plus i was only 2 blocks away from highland anyway. my paranoia about the spray got the best of me, and they made me think that i should get everything checked out just to make sure i did not have my eye cut or anything. so i'm sitting on the thing with my clothes completely soaked and get admitted. hopefully my insurance covers all this, but i'm not feeling optimistic about it. i'm sitting in the hospital for nearly 2 hours. one of the cops comes along and asks if i want to press charges. i think about this, and who knows if these assholes were over 18 or under, and i think about this conversation i had last week with em about "the prison industrial complex" and just the fucked up dynamics of gentrification and how everywhere i've lived in oakland the past 7 years has had insane crime and violence happening, and how i have been told not to trust cops my whole life. when it comes down to it though, i figure these guys could be doing this to anyone else and maybe they wouldn't report it and yes, i think i could pick him out of a line up, but no, i don't know for sure. they want to irrigate my eyes again, but once i'm able to see and i'm drying out all the contents of my wallet, i just ask them to make sure i'm not going blind from whatever got sprayed on me. he does a ph test on my eyeball and it looks fine and they discharge me. i walk the two blocks back to my house somewhat disoriented and clothes still soaked through. thank god i'm getting the fuck out of east oakland.