Weekly Homework Assignment

It's time once again for Mama Kat's weekly homework assignment. This week, I chose the following prompt: Your trip to the ER...spill it.

I was a huge hockey fan in high school (actually, I still am). I started playing in a deck hockey league with some neighborhood friends. For those who aren't wise to the term "deck hockey," it doesn't mean hockey with lots of hits and fights (sure, sometimes that happened), and it didn't mean playing hockey on someone's back porch. Basically, it means playing hockey on foot (not skates).

Our team was very competitive over the years - in fact, I believe we won a championship or two. We were a very good team, but we also goofed around a lot prior to the games. We'd sit around, make stupid fart jokes, push each other around ... you know, the typical adolescent rough-housing. It's just what we did. We didn't have a coach to "chaperone" us.

During one of these games, a teammate and I got into a stick fight ... no, not hockey sticks, but actually throwing little tree branches or sticks at each other. I remember unloading one at my friend, turning my back, then turning around, only to have a piece of stick hit me in the eye.

I started laughing at first ... but the laughter quickly stopped as my vision in said eye got cloudy. My friend turned pale and said, "Dude, your eye is bleeding." It wasn't the white part - it was actually the Iris! Not good.

We somehow found a total stranger with a pickup truck to drive me to the hospital. I sat nervously in the ER with some sort of cloth draped over my eye. It felt like I was waiting there for hours ... it was more likely about 1/2 hour. The doctor finally took a look at my eye, quickly asked me to see an eye specialist (forget the name of those eye doctors, who put my mind at ease by informing me that although my eye was fine, if the stick had actually hit me a smidge to the left, I would've been blind. Oh, thank goodness! What a relief. My Halloween costumes for the next 20 years could've been "pirate-themed."

Anyway, he put some kind of dye in my eye, dialated it, and told me not to stare into the sun. Thanks doc!