One of my earliest memories is of running around my yard; I must have just turned four. The sun was really bright and it was that brisk warm sun/cold breeze thing that happens in the spring in the Midwest. The dog, as usual, was tied up next to her little house. She was a pretty nice, average dog from what I can remember. Sort of honey-colored and looked somewhat like a labrador. Unfortunately for her, I was your typical unnice kid. The ground was beginning to dry out from the previous winter’s snow, and I looked down and saw a patch of dirt that cracked when it dried. I picked up one of the dirt clods, testing its weight in my grimy hand. I threw the clod up into the air- POW! it exploded when it hit the ground. Very exciting. Would the same thing happen if I threw the dirt at the dog?

POW! “YOWP!” said Heidi the dog, and ran for cover in her house. I continued to pelt the roof of her doghouse with the clods. I picked up a particularly large one and aimed it. I released, and suddenly, the wind changed. The dust from the exploding clod flew back toward me and got in my left eye.

Oh, pain! I couldn’t even see. My eyes watered until I started crying from the stinging. I rubbed and rubbed, trying to make the pain go away. Finally, I ran into our teeny trailer where my grandma was chain-smoking and watching her soaps, as usual. When I came in and showed her my eye she put on her Very Serious Face, which wasn’t that much different from her Usual Serious Face.

“Oh, gurl,” she said in her Southern drawl, tsk-ing and shaking her head. “You shouldnta rubbed it. Now Ahm gonna have to take you to the doctor.”

My memory skips the car ride there. All I know next is that two nurses were holding me down in a chair (they were taking no chances since I had punched a nurse a few months before for the crime of attempting to draw blood). The doctor was leaning over me saying, “Now, Asshole, you’ve scratched your eye from rubbing it. I’m going to put these drops in your eye and it’s going to sting.”

The drops hurt worse than the dirt. I struggled against the two nurses and cried. I had to open my injured eye to let the drops in, and once they were in I saw colors like when you press against your eyes too hard. Then the doctor stuck on a bandage that was like a giant Band-Aid for eyes. He said one more thing before beating it out of the room: “You’ll have to keep your eye shut for two weeks.”

So there I was, with a giant eye patch- a four-year-old pirate. I remember being scolded on the way home by my grandma, who was convinced that the entire world was dangerous and unsanitary. I think she was glad when she could prove her point about this, no matter whose expense it was at. “Ah guess you’ll think twice before throwin any more dirt around, gurl.”

There was a cold snap again, which was typical for that time of year in Michigan, and the tiny cyclops was kept indoors. My grandma spread some newspapers on the kitchen floor so I could blow bubbles over them. I stood in one place and listened while she descibed what happened to someone on the phone. “And she has to wear an ahh-patch for two weeks.”

To this day I am an A+ winker with my left eye.