No time to read right now? Download Is Greater Than’s first eBook collection and take this story with you wherever you go.

On my sixth birthday, my friends and I played Freeze Tag at dusk and I ran into a clothesline.  My head snapped back and I landed flat on my back, knocking the wind out of me.  Worse, the dry rope left a nasty burn across my eyelids.  It hurt like hell and when my lungs returned I howled for my dad to come scrape me off the lawn.

***

I sat on the couch between my mom and dad and they took turns holding ice cubes wrapped in a damp washcloth against my eyelids.  They did so one eye at a time so that I could watch the last few innings of the Cubs game.  I kept falling asleep because the game was a late one against the Dodgers, part of a nine-game West Coast roadtrip.  I eventually woke up in my dad’s arms, carrying me off to bed as Harry Caray called a Bowa-to-Sandberg-to-Durham double-play.

***

When I woke up the next day, everything was peach-colored.  I tried to open my eyes but I couldn’t.  My eyelids had pussed up overnight and sealed my eyelids shut.  I reached up to touch them and felt a layer of crust.  I thrashed around beneath the covers and yelled for my dad to get the hell in my room and give me my sight back.

I heard my parents’ heavy footsteps on the hardwood floor, followed by the sound of the door slamming against the wall as they burst into my bedroom.  I heard my dad tell my mom he’d be right back and I followed his footsteps down the hall and into the kitchen.  Then I felt my mom take my hand, gently sandwiching it between hers.  She shooshed me and told me to breathe.

When my dad returned my mom told me to hold still.  Then I felt something cold and metallic sawing into my eyelashes, debris hitting my corneas.  When I could finally open both eyes, I saw my dad standing over me with a butter knife in his right hand.

***

Once my pajamas were on I ran out the back door.  I looked at my swingset, our garage.  They were still there.  I looked up at the sky.  Still blue, with a sun and some clouds affixed to it.  I looked down at my hands.  They were covered in a sticky translucent goo from peeling an orange.

Things were in order.  My blindness had passed.  I ran back into the house and jammed Burgertime into my Colecovision and played video games until my thumbs got sore.

Photo by Michael Jastremski