Stabbed in the Eye with a Fork

You know the expression “I’d rather be stabbed in the eye with a fork than…”?

Well, when my MIL graduated from college we had a celebration dinner for her.

The Oldest Island Boy was not quite 2 and I was holding him in my lap, facing the table as everyone was going around the table congratulating my MIL.

The Oldest grabbed the fork in front of us, swung it over his shoulder and stabbed me right smack in the middle of my right eye.

Words can’t describe the searing pain a fork to the eye causes.

After the initial pain leveled off my eye got sort of numb and I made it through the rest of dinner without much trouble but the later it got the more it hurt.

By 2am I was in agony and knew I had to go to the ER.

Obviously I couldn’t drive myself but it was raining and the kids were asleep. There are several people we could have called but it was the middle of the night and we didn’t want to wake anyone up so the Island King and I decided he would stay with the kids and I would go to the ER in a taxi.

I’ve had several corneal abrasions over the years (me and contacts were not a good mix) so I knew they’d give me some numbing drops and send me on my way.

We called a cab and when he pulled up I ran out and got in.

Driver: “Where do you need to go?”

Me: “The ER”

Causing him to swing around with an alarmed look and ask if I needed an ambulance.

“No, I hurt my eye, I’m going to be fine but I can’t see to drive”

Which seemed to reassure him that I wasn’t going to die in his taxi and off we went.

On our way he says “So, how’d you hurt your eye?”

“My son stabbed me in the eye with a fork”

Before I could get any more out he said “No S#^t? Wow, that’s like Jerry Springer stuff right here in my cab.”

My eye was hurting too bad to correct him so I just said “Yep” and thankfully we pulled into the ER a couple of minutes later.

Where the question “What’s wrong?” came up again.

“My son stabbed me in the eye with a fork”

I learned that if you say that to ER personnel they immediately want to call the police to make a domestic violence report.

Once I explained that the son in question was only 18 months old the nurse got me into an exam room and it wasn’t long before the doctor came in.

Again, I had to explain what happened. I swear I must have said “I was stabbed in the eye with a fork” 10 times that night.

The doctor looks into my eye, steps back and makes a choking sound which I soon realize is him trying not to laugh.

I sighed and told him to go ahead and when I did he sat down on a stool and laughed until he cried.

He composed himself and apologized, saying “I have never seen anything like this. You have four tiny square punctures in your cornea and after looking at them I realized that this is indeed what it looks like when someone has been stabbed in the eye with a fork.

I was given numbing drops, an eye patch and some pain meds and I was done.

The taxi that brought me came back picked me up and took me home.

It took almost a week for my eye to heal and I still have scar tissue that I have torn on occasion while rubbing my eye too hard.

And every eye doctor I’ve seen since has looked at my eye, asked what happened, looked at my eye again and then cracked up.

The point of this story is to say that you should think very carefully before you use that expression because I’m here to tell you that being stabbed in the eye with a fork is not pleasant.