“Dang it!” I exclaimed in dismay, dropping the weed eater I had been using and cupping my hand over my eye. The pain was excruciating!
After a few seconds, I lowered my hand experimentally, but quickly replaced it. It didn't help much, but uncovering my eye was worse.
“I should have known better,” I muttered to myself as tears streamed down my face from both eyes. Maybe the water would help wash out whatever was in my left eye.
“Hey, water is a good idea,” I thought to myself. Picking my way over the lawn, I felt around for the hose I had left running in the planter box. I let the water run into my left hand, holding it under my eye, but I couldn't keep the lid open long enough to do any good. Man, it hurt!
Stumbling into the house, I went in search of mom. At times like this I was extremely grateful we shared our double house.
“I knocked something into my eye with the weed eater,” I told her as soon as I found her in her kitchen. “I think I'm going to have to go to the doctors.”
“Gale!” she exclaimed. “You should have been wearing goggles!
“I know, I know.”
Mom tried to look in my eye, but I couldn't keep it open long enough for her to see anything.
Mom watched the little girls for me, and within half an hour I was sitting in my doctors office while he tried to see what was going on.
“I'm sorry, Gale,” he told me after taking a look at my red, swollen eye, but I'm going to have to send you to an optometrist. This is more than I can take care of. What on earth did you do to yourself.”
“Oh, I was weed eating our front yard and knocked a rock up, I guess,” I mumbled ashamedly.
“You ought to wear protective goggles when you do that,” he told me sternly.
“I know,” I replied.
The eye doctor gave me the same lecture. “You're really lucky you just cut your eye,” he told me while he worked. He had already put numbing drops in my eye, the relief was wonderful! After a few minutes he held up a pair of tweezers triumphantly and said, “See this! No wonder your eye hurts!”
He was holding a not that tiny pebble in the tweezers. “This was in your eye lid,” he told me. “Now do you know why you're supposed to wear goggles when you work in your yard?”
Yes, I knew. Actually, I'd known long before I ever got the darned rock in my eye in the first place. But dang it all, goggles made my eyes sweat, then they fogged up and it was hard to see, and who wanted to look like a raccoon with a funny tan line around their eyes all summer?
I had to admit, though, it wasn't that becoming wearing a black eye patch either for the next few days. Maybe I would try wearing goggles when I worked out in the yard, at least when I used the weed eater.
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