It's all fun and games...

Surely, you've heard the phrase before. It's all fun and games until somebody puts an eye out...then hey, free eyeball! Seriously, though, all the threats and warnings roll around in the heads of most people every time they start running with scissors or juggling pencils (which everyone does sometimes, right?). But in all honesty, how many people have actually done it? Can you think of any? Even one?

Let's face it, most people probably can't. They've heard the warnings and yet, there is no living proof for most people that someone would actually put their eye out doing some mundane activity such as chipping rocks or drilling holes in random objects. Well, if you are reading these words (and if you are comprehending them, then there is really no other way you could be receiving this message unless someone is reading them to you, but that totally counts), then you have on the other end of this keyboard the living proof you've been looking for your entire life.

We'd been engaged one week. About a month prior, I'd left my job at RadioShack to work for a fireplace company in town installing fireplaces in new construction homes. It paid more than RadioShack, and was actually a lot less work than sales, so I went for it. The guy I worked with was a little harsh sometimes, and in the few days prior to this incident, he was being really, really hard on me and threatening to have me fired if I didn't step up the speed a bit.

The Friday before, I'd managed to mess up two sheet metal covers by misfiguring the dimensions...twice. My doing so, I used up both sheets we'd brought to make the covers with. This had upset the guy I was with considerably, but since he lived out that way anyway, he said he'd get it on the way home.

That morning, we'd gone out to a house with a really high chase on it (a chase, if you don't know, is the industry term for the chimney, but while the word chimney only refers to the part that sticks out of the house, chase refers to the entire internal run from the fireplace to the outside), and some extra accessories which were my responsibility to make sure I'd grabbed them all. Well, once we got the cover on the chase (which I'd made correctly that time), we needed to put the vent on the unit. Well, guess what? I hadn't grabbed the tube stuff we use to run the vent to the outside of the house, so I had to run back into the shop to get it. Again, he was not happy.

After that fiasco, we did another house which went well, and finally came to a job so big that it works perfectly as a final scene in this mini-movie. Not only were my partner and I out there but the boss and another guy were there too. It took four of us to get this one taken care of.

To place some perspective on this, I'll give you the precise location where we were. In Tulsa, there is a museum called Philbrook Art Museum. It is located in a very high end neighborhood where the houses near it are comparable to the museum house. The house were working on was across the street from Philbrook's exit, so if you are driving out of Philbrook and look directly across the street, you will find a three story house that was stucco at the time. That's the place.

The run of the pipe through the chase wound through the walls of this house in probably the craziest manner possible until it finally came out the top. I was wearing some jean shorts that day and actually tore a hole in the butt, so I was showing off my underpants most of the day as well, not to mention this job came up right before lunch so I hadn't eaten anything all day. But the time came to make the cover, and since the boss was there, I was motivated to show that I could get this thing done correctly and quickly the first time.

I took the measurements of the top of the chase, measured where the pipe was coming out so I could offset it properly and ran down the ladder balanced on the balcony and down the stairs in the house out to the truck. I measured and snipped that cover quicker than such a cover has been snipped and toted it upstairs and up the ladder to the roof.

The other three were up there waiting for me. It was my time to shine. I slid the cover over the pipe and it fit perfectly. All four sides lined up without a hitch -- it was just a matter of getting it around the screen wire the stucco had been plastered on. We had a standard way of doing this, and while improper, we used a screwdriver as a pry bar to pop the cover off of the screen wire, so it could slide right down and we could screw it into the sides of the chase.

I took the screwdriver out of my tool belt and popped one side of it, but there was another side also caught on the screen wire. Quick as a whip, I jumped over to that side, lowering myself inline with the side of the cover so I had a good view of what I was doing. I slipped the screwdriver between the lip of the cover and the screen wire and gave it a tug.

Next thing I knew, the screwdriver had hit me in the eye. I dropped it with a yell and covered my eye. Fortunately, the tiles on the roof were fake ceramic. If they were real, I'd have had some bigger problems related to a three story drop, but since they were fake, my shoes still gripped the roof, so when I went to my knees, I didn't slip. I knew I couldn't see out the eye, and I was panicked.

You see, my eye sight has always been a source of pride for me. I had 20/15 vision in both eyes. I could read stuff from a distance to make people sick. But now, I looked like a victim in a horror movie. Blood ran down the side of my face, and my shirt was covered in it. The other three helped me down the ladder, and got me to the boss's truck where he took over and drove me to the emergency clinic where worker's comp issues begin.

I was told I was going to see a Dr. Goldfinger (yeah, that's my Bond obsession showing through), so I called The Queen and in the calmest voice mentioned to her that I rammed a screwdriver into my eye and going to see Dr. Goldfinger. She initially thought I was joking since I was so calm, but once she realized I was serious about what had happened, she told her co-workers that she had to leave immediately...and they let her.

From here, things get a little fuzzy for me because I'd lost a lot of blood and was in a lot of pain. Don't let anyone fool you, poking your eye out is very, very painful. Goldfinger had a look at me and determined they needed to operate that evening to sew up the damage to buy time to do what really needed to be done. At this point, we knew I'd sent the screwdriver through my cornea, iris, lens, and probably hit the retina, detaching it. Ouch.

From there, I was allowed to lay down in a dark room with a trash can since I'd felt like vomiting more than once, but unfortunately, since my stomach was still empty, I had nothing to throw up. I was still in my bloody t-shirt and ripped shorts, so I was also quite cold, and probably going into shock from the pain, but still I waited. The Queen was allowed into the room, and she cleaned up my face. I don't know if I said anything worthwhile or not; I was passing into deliriousness.

The last thing I remember from that day was my being placed on a wheeled bed and stripped. They were shoving paper after paper in my face to get me to sign away all their responsibility. In a fit of frustration I told them that my father (who, I think, was nearby) could sign all the papers for me. He would have been in a much saner state of mind at that point.

So the paper pushers left me alone as I was wheeled into a room I would never be able to describe at that point. They put a mask over my face and told me to count down from ten to one.

10...9...