Columnist Susan Snyder: Pay phones target of balm scare

Thursday, Feb. 10, 2005 | 8:19 a.m.

Anarchists threatening to scare people by smearing Icy Hot muscle-ache cream on public telephones are indeed a crafty bunch.

The threat, released by Metro Police and the FBI this week, implies that these people can actually find public telephones.

When was the last time you could find a public phone when you actually needed or wanted one?

One needs only to have car trouble in the dead of summer and discover one's cell phone is battery is dead to truly appreciate modern society's scarcity of pay phones.

It was 112 degrees, and I was stranded with an overheating Ford Focus (aka, Ford Recall) near Warm Springs Road and Arroyo Grande Boulevard in August. And my cell phone battery proved even more useless than the so-called repair job the car had just received at a local dealership.

Streaming with sweat and weeping in frustration, I must have looked like Sasquatch's sister (Sisquatch?) when I begged a beauty salon in a strip mall to let me call a tow truck from their business phone.

A phone, one salon customer said, might be in a shopping center across the road. But no one was sure, and I was not going to walk half a mile to the nearest crosswalk and back again to find out.

In any case, should these anarchists seeking to scare people actually find public phones to vandalize, they ought to realize that anyone using a pay telephone probably has a lot more to worry about than a funny smell emanating from the receiver.

But, just in case they aren't suitably distressed, police say these cream-rubbing bandits leave notes telling people they have been exposed to a toxic substance.

It doesn't take that much work. Icy Hot and similar sore-muscle remedies can, in and of themselves, be terrifying under the right circumstances.

For example, I recall an incident involving the particularly unfortunate arrangement of Ben-Gay, a jar of udder balm, aching thigh muscles and saddle sores from a long bicycle ride.

Suffice to say that certain processes should be done in a carefully planned sequence and never performed in connection with each other unless one thoroughly washes one's hands between applications.

Adding a telephone receiver to the situation could not have made it any worse. Might have made it better. I could have called someone to cry.

But smearing it on a telephone receiver? Please. If you're not going to do something truly scary, then do something funny.

Go into some hoity-toity restaurant and order a really expensive item that comes on a giant plate and is garnished with a sprig of something that looks like it came from your neighbor's drought-stricken shrubs.

Smear a thin coating of Icy Hot on the bottom of the plate, the ask the waiter to explain why your food smells like that.

Or rub Icy Hot into your shoes, board an elevator and then look at other people as if they are the ones who smell.

OK, OK. Don't do any of that. Pranks and urban legends such as Icy Hot-ergate aren't funny when a little old lady ends up being hospitalized with an anxiety attack and an entire road is closed off because the hazard materials team has to decontaminate a pay phone.

If they can find it.