Monday, September 18, 2006

a nearly proverbial suffering almost unlike any other

David loves sticks. With the high value he puts on them, you would not think they grew on trees. He picks them up, he uses them as guns (don't ask) and fishing poles (I don't know). He insists that you have some. When we go for a walk, he wants to stop and gather every stick we cross. He'll ask me to carry his trike so that he can walk and gather sticks.

He loves to take big heavy sticks and fling them carelessly up into the sky.

If you don't see where this is going, you are as naive as he is was.

I've watched him do this, the stick flinging, and I've thought to myself that he is asking for trouble, but I have not thought of any way to adequately explain the physics of a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. So, I figure the worst that can happen is a scratched cornea. Corneas heal. And if it doesn't, well, so he won't be a fighter pilot.

Sure enough he comes in the house tonight all crying and moaning and bleeding out of his eye and wah wah wah.

In fact, he was smart enough to close the eye as the stick approached and just scratched his eye lid. Nothing poetic or eternal about a poke in the eye lid with a sharp stick, and I am sure that there are plenty of things worse, so we let him go back out and try for something a more literary.

later metaphorical fans

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