Sarah Van der Kley: Down the tubes with unread labels

Sarah van der Kley

My Dad is a man who takes particular care when it comes to protecting his face from the sun.

The rest of his body he doesn't seem to worry so much about; he'll happily spend hours in full sun with no protection on his arms or legs but is very good at applying sunscreen to his face (probably because he looks like Rudolph after just 10 minutes outside).

So when we spent a day out recently, he did his usual and asked Mum for the sunscreen.

He applied a liberal amount and rubbed it in, but when I spotted him a few minutes later, it was clear it had not been rubbed in properly.

I was 50 metres away and it was obvious. It was probably obvious from the moon, his face was so white. I mentioned it to him and he asked Mum to help him rub it in. It didn't help.

My sister and I could not stop laughing at how much he looked like a ghost. We wondered if he was trying to actually disappear.

Eventually, my Mum pulled us aside and said "Look, you two, can you please stop laughing at your father? I don't want to tell him but it turns out that wasn't sunscreen I gave him. It was zinc."

Mistaking one product for another happens more often than I thought. We opened it up to our listeners and heard many stories about people mistaking various tubes of things for toothpaste, including Deep Heat, Bepanthen antiseptic cream and even haemorrhoid cream.

Fiona's husband went to put some moisturiser on after noticing his face was particularly dry but found he resembled Donald Trump after using bronzing cream instead.

That stuff, as Fiona's husband now knows, lasts for days.

Sarah had a friend staying over who made what they thought was a tuna sandwich. They didn't even realise until Sarah told them that it was not tuna but cat food.

And one loving grandma went to treat her granddaughter's head lice with nit cream she had in the cupboard. She left it on the girl overnight and woke the next morning to her granddaughter yelling for her.

It wasn't nit cream she had used but hair removal cream and the poor girl now had bald patches. On the plus side, head lice can't cling to hair that is no longer there!

A good lesson for us all - always read the label.

• Don't miss Adam Green and Sarah van der Kley on The Hits Hawke's Bay from 6am to 9am, Monday to Friday.