The Sad But True Story of How I Super-glued My Eyes Shut

(Helena, yes, we still have our dog...and her hormone induced urine-leakage problem..but yeah, that's another post for another time...


Nobody won or lost the Fatness/Skinniness contest since we both lost 10-15 pounds, but we couldn't afford the iPod or the new camera. I ate the better portion of a three meat pizza and had a beer for lunch to help my sense of demoralization...but don't worry...eating less and better is becoming more the norm. )

And now, for the-much-clamored-for, sad but true story, (which is really my best party story, except for maybe the syphilis debacle, and now I'll have to get a new one or be boring from here on out at ALL the parties I go to).

So, once upon a time, I was an innocent freshman in Bible college and I had never done a bad thing in my whole life, except maybe stay out all night, but that was only because it was snowing really hard and I didn't want to drive in it and it was so late, I didn't want to wake my parents up by calling them, so I just drove home in the morning, to which my dad muttered, "Dumb kid...next time, you really should call" and that was literally the end of it.

So, there I was, sitting in my dorm room, minding my own business, studying for a World Civ test, prepping a really edgy persuasive speech for class on "Why We Should Be Able to Hold Hands on Campus," and writing a long composition for my English class on the play I had just led in, Antigone. Since I had had the lead, most people on campus recognized me (it was a small school) and I had forever cast myself on campus as one of those drama-geek-girls...the likes of whom had recently starred in such classics as The Miracle Worker (Helen Keller) and even Shakespeare.

It was a Thursday night and all three of these things were due the next day. After that, I was headed to New York City for the first time on a field trip, and then on to Robb's house for the first time. My life was JUST.... GETTING..... INTERESTING.

Bored, my suite-mate and I struck up a conversation about pranks. I, as I mentioned before, was so good, I had never actually played any pranks myself (boring), but my brother, on the other hand, was a total heathen and extremely hilarious. So I told Nicki about how, in high school, he super-glued a quarter to the floor under the drinking fountain, so that as you leaned down for a drink, you spotted the money, nonchalantly leaned down to pick it up, and ended up looking like a loser trying to retrieve the coin. Nicki found this to be just the thing to snap her out of her study-induced funk. "I have a quarter!" She offered enthusiastically. I had a half-used tube of super-glue in my desk, which I had brought along to college because it was on my lengthy list of "things I might want at some random moment."

If you have any imagination at all, you can picture a half-used tube of super-glue, with it's too-tight, glued-on, twisty-twist lid. In your mind's eye, you should be able to see how the tube, with the tension of my forceful twisting to remove the stuck-on cap, burst open, spewing the opaque, stinky fluid into the air.

My head went back, and to the left as the Krazy hit my eyes, causing me to squint them so tightly closed, my cheek was actually involved. In the right eye, the glue hit mainly the corner of my eye, so I was able to prop it open and survey the damages.

"Guys," I announced calmly to the lounge full of girls, "It's in my eye." Instantly, what seemed like pandemonium broke loose...I think there were 11 girls in my bathroom, which was the size of a postage stamp. Nicki read the side of the tube, "If you get glue in your eyes, flush with water and ..."


"consult a physician"I mentally supplied, since I had actually read the warning label ahead of time.

But Nicki finished lamely, "...keep flushing with more water" so as not to alarm me.

Somebody was being picked up to go babysitting, and that mother was a nurse, so she got dragged into the fray...I don't know what she looked like, but I know her tone was very grave. "You need to go to the emergency room right away."

I still had some sense of humor at this point, and cracked jokes on the way to the ER with my Resident Director, who sadly, didn't have much sense of humor herself, and was prone to be disapproving. After a long time, I was seen by a doctor who asked me to try to move my eye. It was scratchy and burning and tearing, but the tears couldn't get out of the glued-shut duct and thus ran, unflatteringly, out my nostril. The doctor made disapproving noises. The nurses asked if I was trying to glue on nails. The RD, I have no idea about. A specialist was called. I began to get a little nervous at that point, since nobody seemed to think it was funny. "Wait, I'm not gonna lose my eyesight or something because of this?" I asked half-joking. I got truly nervous for the first time when the doctor answered, "We'll just have to wait and see."

In a state of near panic, I waited for the specialist, who came in and asked me a couple of questions, made some jokes (finally!), and then told me what his prescribed course of action would be....as he pulled the skin on my cheek and my eyebrow apart in one quick RIP. That smarted.

And then he cut off my eyelashes. Top and bottom. I actually thought, at this point, about a Seventeen Magazine article I had read about a girl who pulled out her eyelashes when she was a kid, and they never grew back. This was what I decided to freak out about until he ripped my eyelids apart, revealing a strangely-shaped, hardened lump of glue, which had not fused to my cornea since it had been wet enough to prevent a good bond.

I was outfitted with a very unflattering eye-patch and was given a multiplicity of eye-drops to prevent infection. Come to think of it, the eye-patch was probably an improvement over my freaky, lash-less eye.

I returned to the dorm, expecting my only hurdle to be removing the remaining glue from my hair. Turns out, the whole dorm had heard that I was blinded in both eyes, which was also reported to the entire guys soccer team who were at the National tournament in Florida for the week. For months after that, I was greeted on the sidewalk by many a bleach-blond jock, "Hey, Helen Keller."