Orange Eyes

I am a champion toilet paperer.
If you grew up in the city then you might not understand what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the youthful right of passage of wandering the streets at night armed with toilet paper and then flinging it over the trees in your friends/enemies yards.
Some kids also forked and used shaving cream. I never did. My parents let us toilet paper as long as we didn't fork or use shaving cream. My mom even drove the gettaway car on numerous occasions.
I'm sure there was some vadalism rule about toilet papering but as far as I knew, when I was a kid, the only rule was if you got caught you had to help clean it up.
I was never.ever.caught.
In....1994 (I think) my parents let a French exchange student come live with us. It was August and my seester was away at Ohio State Fair Band. He was with us for the whole month and we had a lot of fun with him. One time he asked my parents how they got me to stop talking (I know, it's very surprising that I talked a lot back then). Dad told him they just whacked me on the forehead with the dull end of a table knife. A few days later we were at a restaurant eating and apparently I was talking to much because Xavier (the frenchie) calmly picked up his butter knife, blade in hand, and whacked me on the forehead.
Yep, that's the kind of 30 days it was.

At some point during that 30 days I mentioned toilet papering and Xavier just didn't get it; much like the French didn't understand Jell-O I found out later. I decided to show him. My boyfriend at the time was staying at his friends house a few miles down the road from me and we decided that would be the perfect night. Mom drove us to Millers to stock up on TP, Karen from a few houses down came over and the 4 of us set out. Boyfriends friend was named David and his house had a line of trees across the front of his property. That will be important information in a few minutes.
My mom turned around and parked on the side of the country road and turned off all the lights. It wasn't terribly late, maybe midnight or 1am, which was our first mistake. We were out of the car and flinging toilet paper around, trying to show Xavier how to successfully throw and unroll at the same time.
We spread out around the sides and tried not to giggle to loudly. As I rounded the back of the house I glanced in a window. I saw boyfriend and David standing there looking around. I froze. They looked out the window and saw me standing in the moonlight.
Almost in slow motion I saw them turn to run outside and I turned just as slowly it seemed while suddenly screaming, "Ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!"
Karen snagged Xavier by the arm and I ran around my side of the house making a break for the car. I heard the house door slam and boyfriend and David shouting furiously. We all crashed through the tree line towards the getaway car. I glanced back briefly and then turned to speed up towards the car.
When I turned around I felt a smack in the face and saw a bright pop of white light. I brushed at my face and dove towards the car. Xavier and Karen were already inside and I turned to my mom screaming "GO GO GO!" As she peeled out from the side of the road she started shouting my name. "WHAT?!" I finally yelled back. "Your EYE!"
I flipped down the mirror and saw that I had blood streaming out the corner of my eye (by my nose) like tears.
Apparently the thing that slapped my face was a stick and by slapped my face I apparently mean it inserted itself into my eye.

We went back home and to Karens house a few houses down. Her aunt that she lived with was a nurse and saw I had tree bark in my eye and was afraid it would be scratched.
I had mom call Nicole, whose mom was an ER nurse at the time. They told me to take out my contact and come to the ER. Mom left Karen at her house and drove Xavier and I to the ER.
The whole way there Xavier told me how something just like this happened to his brother ("why do you speak of him?") and the doctor had to put a need ---> <------- this big (imagine him holding his hand farther apart then my head was deep) with no numbing medicine to fix his eye. Ughtastic.

Nicole's mom was working at the ER and when we went in she helped the doctor. They put numbing drops in my eye and they used a special light to look in and see if it was scratched at all. The eye wasn't scratched but there was a heck of a lot of bark in there. Their special drops made my eye glow orange under their special light and the pieces of tree were darker, so they knew what to pull out. After what felt like forever they pulled out all the bark and I was back to normal. Sort of.
They made me wear an eye patch. AN.EYE.PATCH.
Ughfreakintastic.
Even worse, I was working at a farm market with a boy that I had a crush on. I didn't even get one of the cool leathery bedazzled eye patches. Mine was tan, totally bland and not a bedazzled bead to be found.
The pirate jokes were the worst part. Thank God it was August and school hadn't started yet.