The One Where I Flush Dad's Eye Down the Sink

November 17, 2003 - 1:30 p.m.

Last Five Entries:
The Party's Over
July 11, 2004
The Next Day
2004-03-31
My Nervous Breakdown
2004-03-30
True Confessions: My Life as a Female Impersonator
March 15, 2004
Bite Me
February 29, 2004

Contact:

I flushed Dad's eye down the sink.

Dad comes home every day on his lunch break. Today, spent a few minutes in the bathroom upon coming home. When he left, I went in to wash my hands. I saw that the sink was plugged up and there was water standing in the sink. I hate this. This is something that Mom often does at night- she plugs up the bathroom sink when she removes her contact lenses and washes them, and never unplugs the sink, so I often find standing, dirty water in the sink. So I figured that this standing water was left over from last night, and I unplugged it to drain the sink and I washed my hands.

Of course, when I went into the bathroom at that moment, it couldn't have been standing water left from last night, because I had already used the bathroom several times this morning, and I would have unplugged the sink then.

After I washed my hands and left the bathroom, Dad went back into the bathroom. And I heard him exclaim, "My eye has been flushed down the sink!"

At this point, I should explain that Dad has only one eye. Actually, he has two eyes, but one is made out of glass. He lost his right eye many decades ago, when he was out hunting, and another hunter mistook him for the wildlife and shot him. He has thus worn a glass eye ever since.

Last night, Dad wasn't wearing his glass eye. I actually hadn't noticed until he pointed it out. But his glass eye hasn't been staying in the socket recently. The weight of a glass eye will eventually stretch the eyelids out of shape so that they won't hold the eye in anymore. Every once in a while, he needs to get surgery on that eye socket to tighten it up so it will hold his glass eye in.

He told me last night that he was wearing a clear glass eye, which would keep his eye socket in shape until he could replace his actually glass eye. I couldn't see what he was wearing in his eye; his eye looked empty to me, and I really didn't understand how the clear glass eye would fit in his eye when the real one wouldn't. But I didn't question him about it at the time.

What I discovered today is that what he called his "clear glass eye" isn't actually a glass eye. It's a convex piece of glass that looks a lot like a large contact lens. It's worn pressed up against the back of the eye socket, to hold the eye socket in shape.

It's clear, so it's hard to see when it's in water, and it's thin enough to slip right down the sink drain when I unplug it.

So Dad and I spent the hour tearing apart the sink pipes to try to retrieve the glass "eye." Actually, he took the sink pipes apart, while I watched helplessly.

Fortunately, the glass "eye" was stuck in the pipes, and Dad retreived it.

So he got to pop it back in his eye socket, and he slung his eye patch back on and is again a happy pirate.