Patti pulled an end to this. “I’m enjoying this but I am watching the clock and we need to get to the real reason Diane is here.”

Diane’s demeanor changed. “I was little afraid of that. I knew it would come up but I was hoping we could put it off.”

“I know. It’s scary.” Patti used her own term.

“Yep.” She became very tense.

“Do you want me to tell them about fifth grade?”

“No. I can. I think. But if I stop, finish it for me.”

“Sure.”

“We had just started fifth grade, it was September 17, I was at home on a Thursday evening. My dad had just grilled hamburgers. We were sitting in the back yard at the picnic table eating. Suddenly there was a sharp pain in my eye and I couldn’t see, like I closed it. I put my hand up to my face and when I took it down there was blood on my hand. I screamed. My mom and dad rushed me to the hospital. They took me to surgery and had to remove my right eye. When they took it out they found a piece of metal. Later they found that a neighbor was mowing grass, hit a stone, a piece of the blade the size of a penny and twice as thick sheered off, flew over a hundred yards and went into my eye. It ripped up the whole eye. They couldn’t fix it. It went in so fast I didn’t blink till after it went in so my eyelid wasn’t damaged.”

“So you lost the sight in your eye.”

“Yes. Actually I lost the eye. Thankfully it hit the way it did, they think it hit flat so that it destroyed the eye but didn’t have the power to go through the eye socket and into my brain. If it had entered on the side it would have gone through the eye. It could have killed me. There wasn’t any damage to anything but my eye. Even the eye lid wasn’t damaged. I never saw the piece of metal and didn’t have time to blink. My brothers and sister all wear glasses, I was the only one who didn’t. A pair of glasses with any stopping power like they all wore would have stopped the piece of metal. I would have had a bruise on my nose.  It took me a couple months to get over the hatred for the eye doctor. I had an exam about three months before. He at first said I should probably get glasses, I am a little nearsighted, but then said they would be more bother than help, to wait two or three years and see if it gets better or worse. If he had given me the glasses I would probably have been wearing them. My eye was pretty well destroyed and the retina was torn off the optic nerve. I was irretrievably blind in that eye the instant it hit.”