Father's Day for me this year was an interesting one.
The Youngest Island Boy passed through a ritual that apparently all my male children must pass.
A little background…
When the Oldest Island Boy was about 2 years old we were having dinner at my MIL's house one night.
He was sitting in my lap at the dinner table and he grabbed a fork off the table.
Before I knew what was happening he swung the fork up and back and stabbed me right in my right eye.
The pain was incredible but I could still see and so I figured I’d be ok.
After dinner we went home but my eye was still hurting really bad. I stood it as long as I could but by 3am I couldn’t take it anymore and knew it was time to go to the ER.
It was storming out and we didn’t want to wake the kids and drag them out in the mess but I couldn’t drive myself because my eye was hurting so bad and any kind of light made it worse so we decided to call a cab and have the cab take me to the ER and then pick me up and bring me back home.
When the cab pulled up I ran out and got in and then told the driver I needed to go to the ER.
He asked what was wrong and I said "My son stabbed me in the eye with a fork." The driver gave me the oddest look and I realized immediately that I sounded like one of those people on the Jerry Springer Show and had had some sort of domestic dispute.
When I got into the ER I revised my story a little and told them that my 2 year old son stabbed me with a fork.
That sounded a little better.
When the doctor came in to see me I told him the story and then he took a look at my eye.
He started making a choking kind of noise and I asked what was wrong.
Speaking very slowly he starts to tell me that he can see 4 dots in a row on my cornea and then he just cracked up. I realized he wasn’t choking – he’d been trying not to laugh.
He apologized and said that looking at my eye he can tell that it was a fork because there is a straight row of 4 marks on my eye – the exact imprint of a fork.
He was very apologetic about laughing but said he had never seen an injury like this and that when I said fork he looked at my eye and sure enough saw fork prints.
I told him to laugh away and that once my eye stopped hurting so bad I would probably be laughing too.
That was almost 7 years ago and I still have 4 scars on my eye which I’m told will never go away. I have to be really careful not to get anything in that eye or to rub it too much or the scar tissue tears causing a fresh corneal abrasion.
It’s happened a couple of times over the years and whatever doctor I see for it usually ends up laughing when they hear the story and see the scar.
Fast Forward to Father’s Day 2007
The Youngest Island Boy was playing with GI Joe and some of his stuff in the living room.
GI Joe has 2 swords and the Youngest was having trouble getting them right in his hand and he dropped one.
I bent down to pick it up and just as I bent over he got the second sword right in his hand and raised his hand up to show me.
Unfortunately, I was bending over as he was lifting the sword up and he poked me right in the eye with it.
The sword went into the corner of my right eye. I felt it go into my eye and let me tell you that’s a really odd sensation.
Then pain registered.
It hurt horribly and I was afraid to open my eye in case I couldn’t see out of it.
Luckily, I could still see but there was some serious pain. The sword went into the corner of my eye and lucky for me missed the cornea area. And of course it’s my right eye – the same eye the Oldest stabbed years ago.
Fortunately I didn’t need to go to the ER or eye doctor – I can’t imagine the laughing I’d have to endure. Who gets stabbed with a fork and then GI Joe’s sword in the same eye?
Obviously the mother of the Island boys.
The Youngest is now officially Son of Sandcastle Momma because he too has stabbed me in the eye.
I don’t know what it is with them – my daughter never stabbed me with anything.
I’m thinking about getting those protective eye goggles and wearing them whenever the boys are around.Labels: Done