Right in the Mother F'ing eye!
2/17/2004 2:33 PM
Stories from my past seem to be a hit here...at least that’s what I get the most emails about (When I say most...I mean 1). So lets get in the "Way back" machine and go back to my youth and remember my days of baby-sitting. As unmanly as it sounds...I baby-sat for a few kids in my neighbor hood. When your 14 and trying to get some scratch together so you can buy the latest Dio album you need to put aside some social conventions. In my neighborhood I had one major customer. The Hells...honestly, that was their name Jim and Marge Hell...and their radiant little Hells, Chad and Cody. My dad, the comedian, would always announce after I came back from their house..."Jared has been to hell's and back...ha ha!". My dad normally is a funny guy...I don't know what went wrong with his internal editing where he thought THAT was funny. But he repeated every time I came back from babysitting. To the point where I would walk in, porch door swinging he'd announce "AH!!! Jared he's..."..."Hells and back, yeah, yeah, I know." Actually babysitting for the Hells was anything but that. They were a young couple...He drove a semi and that was cool. When ever I'd be riding my bike through town he'd wave or give a deafening blast on his air horn. They had a nice little house...great for playing hide and seek. I had grown up with Chad and even though I was baby sitting for him we mostly hung out, watched cable TV and played intellivision. They always had a fridge full of kick ass snacks. They paid me pretty well for basically nothing but playing with their kids and making sure the house didn't start on fire.

Thats when the house caught fire...kidding.

Chad and I were watching MTV one night. It was the only way I could see it at the time. Only a few people had it in East Troy and my mom thought it was the craziest thing in the world. Pay?! For TV? It’s free right now. I wasn't about to buck the system I just had gotten color TV by the time middle school started. So I'd baby-sit and watch hour after unending hour of early 80's MTV. My dangerously short attention span never had a chance. Cody was somewhere running about the house tormenting the cat with his He Man power sword. Which I didn't have much of a problem with because that cat was tough and if Cody ever actually got close to it I'm sure it would have knocked that sword out his hand and spanked him with it. But he was making a bunch of noise and dammit they were just about to play the NEW Def Leppard song. "Cody...Knock it off! Leave the cat alone and come in here and we'll play a game after the NEW Def Leppard video premieres." I'm still amazed what qualified as entertainment in the 80's and more importantly on what captured my interest. I heard the tromping of little feet through the house and turned to see him walk in as I sat on the floor. That’s when that little bastard GOUGED me right in my freaking eye! In retrospect you have to admire his tenacity. When I was his age (5-6) I never would have conceived such an audacious act. But he walked in like Michael Corleone and took me down. However, what he didn't expect was...counterattack. Without really thinking I just lashed out and pushed him back on to the floor and knocking the sword out of his hand while saying something like 'YAAAHHHHHHHH!". Seeing it was a He Man sword he didn't even give the obligatory "By the power of Greyskullllllllllll!!!!" before attacking. Thankfully, my glasses had absorbed and deflected the power of the attacking 5 year old. My enormous observatory sized lenses had saved my sight. The glasses I often bemoaned for blowing any chances with a girl had now saved me. How ironic. Well not really ironic...more coincidental if you think of it But lets not quibble definitions The Battlestar Galactica frames lay on the floor and the sting of the pain first subsided. Chad now returned to the room stunned, PB&J sandwich half hanging out his mouth. "What happened?" was all he could muster. "Your brother stabbed me in the eye with that sword!"..."Oh wow...should I call 911"...."Not yet but I will need you come here and take a look at it and let me know if its bad." He didn't like the sound of that...Meanwhile the TV announces..."That was the NEW Def Leppard video you saw!". Bah...How can I ever show my face in 8th grade now? Felled by a toddler and missing out on the clever symbolism of Joe Elliot carrying a giant sword in "Rock of Ages". Chad was not relishing looking into my eye and possibly seeing it fall from my head. But I could feel a little stream of blood going down my face. I moved my finger. Chad gasped! "Hey wait..." he left and returned with a Kleenex. "Wipe it up" I dabbed at my eye and was sure blood would now be gushing down. But there was barely any on the Kleenex. Could it be true? I walked to the bathroom and saw a shaving type of nick in the corner of my eye. All he'd done was really just scraped the skin. But by know Chad had begun the torment that only a brother could inflict on another. "Oh I'm telling Dad...He's gonna kill you! Jared may be blind in his eye because you're so stupid". I announced that I was...ok. No 911 call would be needed. Although I'm pretty sure that disappointed Chad. Cody put his arm around me and said he was very sorry and we shouldn't tell his parents because it would make them mad. I laughed. I told him if he was sorry that was enough and I wasn't going to tell on him. I found out later that his brother turned him in the next day and the kid lost his He Man sword...My eye healed successfully although my glasses still prohibited girls from being interested in me.

Epilogue...I found out years later that Cody grew up and became a "knife salesman". Still not ironic but kind of funny.