An eye for an eye or two for a dollar.

I had been pretty negligent about having my eyes checked over the past several years. More specifically, I hadn't had a real eye exam since I out processed from the Navy fifteen years ago. There are a lot of reasons to have regular eye exams, and the only reason I hadn't was that I didn't get around to making an appointment. Finally I did and I went to the the exam. I did pretty well on the eye charts. Despite using some weak reading glasses, my 48 year-old eyes cruised through the check-up. Then came the look inside. The doctor noticed a scratch on my right retina. He gave me an explanation of what he thought it might be and told me that, even though he was 95% sure it was nothing, I should have it checked out by a specialist. He made the appointment for me and sent me on my way.
Now, I don't consider myself an alarmist, but 95% sure meant that he was 5% unsure. And 95% nothing was 5% something. For the three weeks up to the appointment with the specialist I kept telling myself it was nothing and kept imagining it was something. I would walk around with my right eye closed to see just how much I needed that depth perception deal anyway. I even pictured myself with an eyepatch, but that look soon included a wooden leg an a parrot as well, which seemed the wrong way to go for a high school English teacher, except of course when reading Treasure Island.
When the specialist examined my eye he said that the scar was really two contusions that had been there for a long time, possibly since my childhood. He asked if I could remember any trauma to my eye when I was a child. I didn't have to think too hard. Four decades earlier I had done some trauma to my eye. some incredibly stupid trauma. It was in the basement of Tim Bonnets house in Edina Minnesota where I was an eight-year old sharpshooter with a mission to assassinate an unsuspecting plastic soldier. I got the victim in the middle of the BB gun's sight and fired. Unfortunately, while looking through the sight I failed to notice the rock wall behind the enemy soldier. No sooner had I pulled the trigger than the ricocheting BB hit me square in the eye. The soldier escaped un scathed.
Despite the fact that my eye hurt for what seemed like years afterward, especially in the bright sunlight, I never told my mother about the incident until a week ago. She asked me if I had ever told my father, and I told her I hadn't told anyone. She asked me if I had told Tim's parents, and I told her again that I hadn't told anyone. She asked me why I hadn't told anyone and I told her that, even at eight years-old, I knew what I had done was really stupid.
The positive thing that came out of this whole thing was that the ophthalmic photographer who took pictures of the retinas of my eyes is an artist who has some pretty neat art based on retinas, a little weird, but kind of cool. Check out the link for PJ Saine.