The reason they cut my eyeball out

The reason they cut out my eyeball was because I got it stuck on a coat hanger. I know that sounds painful and it is a frightening image but it wasn't all that bad. True, it was the pointy end of the thing that got me but at the time it jabbed my eye everything else had already knocked me out so I didn't feel it. I don't think?

Folks need to remember to never mess around with fertilizer and diesel fuel. I wasn't , but my stupid neighbor, Donnie Johnson was. Donnie was 17 at the time of his death. To be fair he really wasn't that stupid as he could follow directions when he wanted to.

He'd read in a book from the library how to fill a bag of fertilizer from Wild Willie's( a midwestern precursor to Wal-Mart) very slowly with diesel full to create a bomb. The only time that Donnie Johnson ever followed any instructions was the time he copied them painfully and slowly from a book at the library. It was a place he seldom visited except to look at pictures in medical books on the shelves almost hidden by the stairs.

If he could have rushed even a tad I might still have an eyeball and Donnie Johnson might still be around. Instead he read the instructions with focused intent, multiple times, I'm guessing, and he paid special attention to the section on the fuse or cap or whatever cause it to ignite and blow up. If he hadn't I might still be watching 3D movies in 3D. Even with the new digital 3D one eyeball just doesn't cut it.

Donnie followed his instructions, created his bomb and placed it between our houses. What he did next makes it hard for me to forgive Donnie. He lit the bomb or whatever it is called that starts a bomb doing its thing, but he failed to run away. One can only guess he wanted to watch it go bang which is really something best heard blocks away. When the bomb, bombed, it blew a hole in our wall and then sent me flying along with most of the stuff in my room. I was knocked out by the concussion or the blast or the flying toilet, and luckily blown up enough that I didn't feel it when the pointy part of the coat hanger snagged my eye.

Donnie ended up all over. Lots of him landed in the sycamore tree in our front yard. For a week the ravens and other carrion favoring birds roosted in the tree feeding on globs and bits of Donnie. I don't know how much they found of him. It was a closed casket and besides my vision was only half as good as it had been before his last science experiment a few days earlier. Over the years I've wondered what Donnie might have become if not for the following those instructions that summer. It might have become a doctor and fixed my eye so I could judge distances better at night. It's something to think about.