In Which I Hit Myself in the Eye with a Penny–Hard Enough to Lose Vision

I have admittedly done quite a few stupid things in my life. But I’m not one to rest on my laurels. I’m constantly innovating–striving to find new ways to be dumb. Because if you’re not moving forward in the Sea of Stupidity, you’re moving backward.

I made some serious progress Saturday evening.

Allow me to set the stage. DC is getting her hair brushed by Denisa. DC hates getting her hair brushed. She cries, mainly because all those curls can pick up quite a few knots. So this time, I decided to come in and help distract her so that it went more smoothly. I started doing some basic magic tricks–coin tricks, pretty much. And that worked perfectly. But it takes a long time to brush all that hair, and DC started to get bored with the same old same old.

Time to kick it up a notch.

There’s this old trick I learned on my mission. You take a penny, put it in your fingers, and snap your fingers, sending the penny flying. If you snap hard enough, you can really get that puppy zinging fast. (What can I say? You wait for a lot of buses when you’re a missionary in Germany. You gotta pass the time *somehow*.) Anyway–usually you flick pennies away from you, but I had a trick where I could flick a penny up my sleeve, making it look like it disappeared.

I decided to bring that trick out of retirement on this auspicious occasion.

I flicked the penny up my sleeve to great astonishment and amazement. DC and TRC both wanted to see how it was done, and I agreed to show them. But in so doing, I did it from a position I never had done before: straight out at shoulder level, so they could see better. I flicked the penny up my sleeve . . .  but missed.

Instead, I hit myself in the right eyeball. Hard. With a penny.

Ha ha. Funny funny. Except I could see out of my right eyeball in a penny-edge-sized slash. I went to the bathroom to recuperate, and vision returned after thirty seconds or so, but it wasn’t a very fun thirty seconds. And my eye still is bugging me enough that I’ll be going to the eye doctor to make sure nothing’s really damaged. (Let me tell you–it’s getting old telling people how stupid I was, though. I mean, it’s an amusing story, but it rests on me being an idiot. Which is true, but sometimes I don’t like remembering it quite so often.)

Anyway. I don’t think there’s lasting damage. I can see fine now. No blurriness. No slashes. No flashes. It certainly could have been worse. So let that be a lesson to you: if you’re going to flick pennies, please do so responsibly. And never flick pennies at your head.

Don’t say I never taught you anything.

Leave a comment

×