‘It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye’. Who among us did not at one time or another hear that warning?
An eye? Of all things which might happen, I question threatening the loss of an eye. Perhaps it stemmed from an Old Testament reference to Samson, who lost his eyes in a very unpleasant manner. In that story, not one eye but both orbs were lost and there was definitely no ‘fun and games’ involved. Perhaps this parental threat was a vague reference to past medieval horrors and tortures? Perhaps they just repeated what their parents and neighbor had said? But I digress.
I managed to jam a knitting needle a half inch into the back of my throat. That was an odd day. It was a long time ago, but it happened and there were no eyes involved, expect those of the wide eyed family doctor who looked at me and asked, ‘You did what now?’ I answered simply as I sat in his office, ‘I jabbed a knitting needle into my throat. It was an accident’. Perhaps that was an unnecessary explanation.
Our taciturn doctor with the New Jersey accent, who thought he had seen it all, sighed, leaned back in his squeaky leather chair and said, ‘Well, there is a first time for everything’. I looked at him. He was intimidating. ‘It was an accident’ I repeated, unnecessarily.
I was rewarded for my efforts with a week’s worth of antibiotics, a period of difficult swallowing, a small bumpy scar way at the back of my palate, which eventually disappeared…and I have not engaged in any more knitting.
My brother, as a toddler, while running around our church nursery one Sunday with a wooden block in his mouth, fell flat on his face and jammed the block into the back of his throat. As he was still a very small child and incapable of explaining in any sort of articulate manner that which he had done, there were some screechingly painful moments when later that day he was given a bottle of warm milk. There followed another trip to see our family doctor.
In time, as we grew, there were a series of unfortunate incidents; sprained ankles, singed braids (birthday candles can be surprisingly dangerous and unreliable), some broken bones and some spectacular spills, including what can only be explained as a ‘Superman dive’ over an open dishwasher door. It was breathtaking.
There were never any eyes involved in these missteps. Nothing was gouged out, poked out, no one was blinded or irreparably scarred for life. ‘It’s all fun and games until someone sticks a knitting needle up one’s throat’…
690 Saint Paul 