Dead Eye
Thursday, January 19, 2012
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Shannon Scott StebbinsI walked down the stairs.
I was bloated from eating the everything in the kitchen pantry and
a quarter of the kitchen counter itself the night before.
My damn foot hurt from Plantar Fasciitis and I was lugging
ChunChun, all thirty pounds of him, on my sore left arm.
It's the usual early crack of dawn. My baby won't let me put him
down or he will sound the Cry Alarm that would wake up my Dad - in
Florida. I have to do everything one-handed: make the bottle, make
the coffee, pee, and do the dishes. I buy a nanosecond of "me" time
when I give him my expensive cell phone to play with; the phone
that could crack when he does his constant gravity tests. He loves
to use my phone but he sucks at it. He can't dial any numbers, or
more importantly, talk.
Go ahead and drop it, son. I am tired. I need my eye drops so I can
see the toilet bowl on my next visit.
No, no, no you can't grab steak knives out of the dishwasher. No,
no, no you can't push over the trash bin and stick your finger in
the razor sharp opening of the empty La Croix can. No, no, no you
can't suck on the head of the bleach bottle in the bathroom.
Time after time I tell him the rules but he won't listen. When I
approach his little, pudgy body to remove him from one of the
several hundred violations he makes in a morning, he kicks his head
back, wails thunder and gives a dramatic performance worthy of
knighthood, one that rivals Sir Laurence Olivier doing Hamlet at
the Globe Theatre.
I opened the cabinet and grabbed my eye drops, leaned back and
squirted a couple of drops into my eye. What I failed to realize
(who would at 5 a.m.?) is that my wife had decided the day before,
to store ChunChun's ear infection liquid antibiotic in the same
location as my eyes drops. She regularly moves the location where
things are stored. It must be her Martha Stewartism at work again.
The bottles looked exactly the same, tiny and white plastic,
particularly in the semi-dark kitchen.
Shortly after I plopped a couple of droplets into my eye, I began
to feel a rapid stinging, a burning of death, my cornea beginning
to peel away from my eye ball.
I covered my eye with my hand in excruciating pain and let out an
arrrrrrrhhhhhhh!!!! ChunChun just looked at me while sucking away
at his bottle. Suck, suck suck. You are on your own, old man. What
am I, a doctor? he seemed to ask through a burp.
I took my arrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhh!!!!! and rushed to the bathroom. I
stepped on a sharp, pointed Lego piece inappropriately sitting on
the bathroom floor which provoked a similar but a slightly more
distinct agonizing sound, like a
uuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!
I barely found the sink with my free eye and hand in a manic
scamper, turned the cold faucet on and began rapidly splashing
water into my flaming eye as the lethal medicine was about to burn
a hole all through my eye socket. All of my fleshy eyeball would be
gone; left would be just a gaping hole.
At least then I could wear an eye patch and look like a menacing
pirate. I have always wanted to be a pirate.
Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!
The burning began to subside after sweeping water into my eye with
my cupped hand for 10 minutes. I was able to locate my eye drops
and squirt some relief into my scorched eyehole.
Suck, suck, suck. ChunChun didn't care about this tragedy. Suck,
suck, suck. He was hitting the bottle hard and carrying a sunken
load in his diaper.
Um, what about "me" time, old man? Burp.
Fatherhood is the most amazing, profound and beautiful thing I have ever done and...I don't recommend it.
See more of Shannon's stories here.
