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Putting My Eye Out
I remember when I was a kid, I used to be scared to death that I would put my eye out. I don't remember ever hurting
either one of my eyes, and I don't think I ever met anyone who had put their eye out, although I did know a blind kid once
but I think he was born that way. The thing is that no matter what I was doing, one of my parents or teachers always warned
me that if I wasn't careful I would put my eye out.
If I was climbing too high on the monkey bars, they would say "Be careful, you'll put your eye out!" If I was riding
my bike down a steep hill, it was "Be careful, you'll put your eye out!" They seemed less afraid I would break a leg or even
die than that I would put an eye out, like it was the absolute worst thing that could ever happen to you.
As much as people warned me about it, you'd think it happened all the time. I mean, you'd think that kids all over American
were walking into their houses all the time with their eyeballs hanging out of their heads crying for their moms to put them
back in.
You'd think there might even be some handy gadget you could order from an 800 number on TV......"Are you tired of
your kids putting their eyes out? Do you spend all your time trying to get them back in? "....and then they show a kid
with an eye hanging out, and a woman's hands trying to jam in back in..."Tired of doing the messy, old-fashioned way?
Try new Ronco, Eyeball Widget. It's fast, easy, and fun to use! Pretty soon your kids will be able to put their own eyes back
in! " And then finally it shows some dorky kid winking at the camera and making some really stupid joke like "I'll keep
an eye out for ya!"
And yet despite all this, I never heard of anyone actually putting their eyes out. I'm sure it happens. It had to have
happened at some time to someone, or else no one would have been warning me about it all the time. Maybe there was one kid
who shot a rubber band at another kid and put his eye out and then became an object lesson for every kid in America. Maybe
they built a statue of him in the town square where he lived, with one hand over the bloody empty socket where his eye used
to be and a limp rubber band in the other. Maybe they made a TV-movie about it, and the kid's mom formed an organization called
MARBLE (Mothers Against Rubber Band Length Enhancement).
As much danger as I was in, though, I made it through childhood with both eyes intact.
Not that there wasn't plenty more to be afraid of.
Nuns
Like nuns. I've always been afraid of nuns. They were the uniforms, first of all, which make them look really serious.
Coincidentally, nuns are pretty serious most of the time. They may not make the rules, but they enforce them, kind of like
the Pope's police. They're all women, of course, but they don't have children, and they have no use for men (we all know women
like that, just usually not so up-front about it). I'm surprised that a fear of nuns isn't more common. I'm surprised that
there isn't a movie or a Stephen King book about a psycho-killer nun or a pyrokinetic nun.
The uniforms themselves may not have been the scariest things about them, but it did help you pick the nuns out from
the rest of the people. That is, until about the 1970's when they caught on to this and started to wear regular clothes so
they could blend in. In my mind that just made them scarier, though; all those hippy 70's nuns in pantsuits, I knew that they
had secret holsters sewn in them somewhere to carry around these great big rulers to just whack you on the knuckles with when
you misbehaved. They were like undercover secret agent nuns, or those body-snatcher pod people who walk among us and we don't
even know. they're there.
The worst thing about them, though, is that they have everyone fooled. I mean, they're nuns. They're all teachers and
librarians and they're religious and feed the hungry and stuff. My parents would talk to them about grown-up stuff and I would
want to scream "Run while you can!!!" I'm not saying all nuns are evil, but if you were a woman and you committed a horrible
crime, where would you hide? You'd become a nun and hide in the, um, place where nuns live, whatever it's called.
If you're a man and you commit a crime, of course, you become a clown. Everyone knows that. Clowns wear make-up all the
time, and no one notices if they don't talk. Although fear of clowns is common, I've never been afraid of them. Even when
Tim Curry appeared on TV as that creepy Pennywise, I still wasn't afraid. Annoyed, yes, but not afraid.
Midgets
But perhaps my least politically correct fear is my fear of midgets. I don't actually know any midgets, but I have known
a lot of really short guys, and they're all pissed off all the time and mean and looking to fight anyone they see because
I guess they feel like they have to prove themselves, and I hate to fight because almost all of the times I've ever fought
I've gotten the crap beat out of me. And if a regular guy who is just really short is mean and feels like he has to prove
himself by fighting all the time, then I guess I've just been always afraid that a midget would be super-mean. And aside from
hurting and bleeding, it would be really embarrassing to have the crap beat out of me by a midget.
Like I said, I don't know any midgets, but if I did meet one and got to know him and he was a good guy I would be friends
with him. Or her. But if he was mean and selfish I wouldn't be. I mean, I wouldn't let my fear of midgets prevent me from
treating him like I would treat anyone else.
Everyone has irrational fear, I think, and they're not always easy to overcome. But admitting them has to be the first
step. Followed by years of therapy, where midget nuns shoot rubber bands at you.
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