LJ Idol: Mistakes We Make (Week 3)
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Saving Face
I can certainly recall several mistakes I have made over the course of my short life. But one stands clearly in my memory as the most terrifying.
For one evening in May 2002, I lost my eyesight.
I’ve always been a pro at learning. This is probably because I make a lot of mistakes. It’s the only way I seem to learn anything, my mom said once. And when I was a couple years younger than I am now and decided to build a clone of myself out of newspaper and duct tape, I should have known that I would encounter some extraordinary learning experiences. I’d name her Eulalie Lunchboxhands and she would make a nice friend and do all the things I hated to do as a student. I was fresh into college. Woody Allen’s quote on how eighty percent of success is showing up hadn’t reached me yet. Neither had most forms of common sense.
“Hey, why don’t we make a cast of your face?” my friend Ray suggested. I should’ve listened to the tone of his voice. It was akin to a hillbilly shouting, “Hey, y’all, watch THIS!” as fateful last words. I should’ve heard the ominous orchestra music playing in the background like in the movies, but they were on their lunch break. Ray pushed his glasses up his nose and his dark bushy eyebrows raised in question. It was my project after all.
“Well, I don’t know…why not.” I nodded to his words, absentmindedly gnawing on my thumbnail. We sat cross-legged on his carpeted basement floor with makeshift limbs and a torso sprawled around us like we had just escaped an explosion. I watched him scramble to his feet and I smiled weakly. My clone was lacking a face but tonight we’d fix it. Let us make man in our own image!
When Ray returned with the bucket of plaster, I laid on the floor. As an afterthought, we glopped Vaseline across my features so the plaster wouldn’t stick too firmly. I shut my eyes and mouth for an eternity as Ray gently slathered the chunky, off-white mixture onto my face. I was impressed with how perfectly it was working! Then I felt the soft whoosh of the hairdryer as he turned it towards me. I sat up on my haunches when I decided that it was dry enough to remove. I slowly started twisting it off my face and feeling a slimy pop as my skin rolled smoothly away from the plaster. As soon as my mouth was free, I laughed in relief.
Now for the eyes. But there seemed to be a problem. The plaster didn't want to leave my eyes for God's sake. I thought, "Hmm" and started to tug a bit, harder and harder. Nothing. "Ray, there's a problem. It's not coming off my eyes," I stammered. After tugging more furiously, I knew I had a bigger problem than I had bargained for. "Ray, this won't work," I exclaimed as I started tearing at the plaster prison, large chunks of plaster falling into my lap and onto the surrounding floor.
The mask wouldn’t come off.
THE PLASTER WOULD NOT LEAVE MY FACE.
I was left with two chunks of plaster the size of my fists dangling from my eyes. And a tear rolled down my cheek from behind it. I could sense the panic welling up in my mind. Ray became frantic along with me and he ran to find his mother. Shouting. Blindness. Ray's mom walked in with a basin of hot water and I tried to melt the plaster of Paris, but that only succeeded in tearing it off my eyebrows. Luckily, they remained unscathed. I couldn’t say the same about my eyelashes which were stuck fast.
“OH MY GOD, RAY! IT WON’T COME OFF!” I wailed.
We called poison control. We called the hospital. We called 911. No one knew what to do. No one had ever had a caller complaining of their eyelashes embedded in plaster of Paris. I slithered into my jacket and Ray shoved my feet into my shoes, and I felt myself being lifted into the air as he carried me to his Jeep. I plopped down with a resounding thump into the seat as Ray drove me to the closest ER.
“Ray.” A lump formed in my throat. “I’m so sorry.”
His hand simply trembled and he patted my knee, like he always did.
---
There’s a certain embarrassment that flushes your face when you have to visit the Emergency Room. Especially if you weren’t there totally by accident. Always the explorer plunging blindly into the great blue yonder. Ray had led me into the ER, a towel completely covering my head. Those in the waiting room stared at me in shock--or at least that's what I was told. I couldn't see a thing. I started to imagine a life without sight, and became overwhelmed.
Oh God. I could remember their confused voices. “Wow, this is new!” the doctor had chuckled. I had wanted to sink into the linoleum, but instead I lay fitfully on a bed for hours until they could figure out what to do. This simply hadn’t happened before.
They had finally settled on good old-fashioned ripping-it-off-my-face. I wonder if they knew what it felt like to have their facial features wrenched off.
My wild screams had filled the hospital.
The nurses and doctor who had delivered me from blindness now stood across the hall with bemused but sympathetic expressions coloring their faces.
“RAY! They’re GONE!” Tears stung my tender red eyes and nestled in the crevices the plaster had left on my cheeks. I should have been thankful that I could see again but my vanity got in the way.
In their efforts to remove the plaster, the doctors had removed every single eyelash.
“Stop it. You’re still the most beautiful girl in the world,” Ray murmured, ruffling my hair. “You’re one tough cookie.” It’s odd, but, I looked up at him and believed him.
Sometimes you lose your pride, and other times you lose your eyelashes. They grow back within a couple months. Eventually, we grow from our mistakes.
And eventually, we succeed in overcoming our obstacles, too.
Saving Face
I can certainly recall several mistakes I have made over the course of my short life. But one stands clearly in my memory as the most terrifying.
For one evening in May 2002, I lost my eyesight.
I’ve always been a pro at learning. This is probably because I make a lot of mistakes. It’s the only way I seem to learn anything, my mom said once. And when I was a couple years younger than I am now and decided to build a clone of myself out of newspaper and duct tape, I should have known that I would encounter some extraordinary learning experiences. I’d name her Eulalie Lunchboxhands and she would make a nice friend and do all the things I hated to do as a student. I was fresh into college. Woody Allen’s quote on how eighty percent of success is showing up hadn’t reached me yet. Neither had most forms of common sense.
“Hey, why don’t we make a cast of your face?” my friend Ray suggested. I should’ve listened to the tone of his voice. It was akin to a hillbilly shouting, “Hey, y’all, watch THIS!” as fateful last words. I should’ve heard the ominous orchestra music playing in the background like in the movies, but they were on their lunch break. Ray pushed his glasses up his nose and his dark bushy eyebrows raised in question. It was my project after all.
“Well, I don’t know…why not.” I nodded to his words, absentmindedly gnawing on my thumbnail. We sat cross-legged on his carpeted basement floor with makeshift limbs and a torso sprawled around us like we had just escaped an explosion. I watched him scramble to his feet and I smiled weakly. My clone was lacking a face but tonight we’d fix it. Let us make man in our own image!
When Ray returned with the bucket of plaster, I laid on the floor. As an afterthought, we glopped Vaseline across my features so the plaster wouldn’t stick too firmly. I shut my eyes and mouth for an eternity as Ray gently slathered the chunky, off-white mixture onto my face. I was impressed with how perfectly it was working! Then I felt the soft whoosh of the hairdryer as he turned it towards me. I sat up on my haunches when I decided that it was dry enough to remove. I slowly started twisting it off my face and feeling a slimy pop as my skin rolled smoothly away from the plaster. As soon as my mouth was free, I laughed in relief.
Now for the eyes. But there seemed to be a problem. The plaster didn't want to leave my eyes for God's sake. I thought, "Hmm" and started to tug a bit, harder and harder. Nothing. "Ray, there's a problem. It's not coming off my eyes," I stammered. After tugging more furiously, I knew I had a bigger problem than I had bargained for. "Ray, this won't work," I exclaimed as I started tearing at the plaster prison, large chunks of plaster falling into my lap and onto the surrounding floor.
The mask wouldn’t come off.
THE PLASTER WOULD NOT LEAVE MY FACE.
I was left with two chunks of plaster the size of my fists dangling from my eyes. And a tear rolled down my cheek from behind it. I could sense the panic welling up in my mind. Ray became frantic along with me and he ran to find his mother. Shouting. Blindness. Ray's mom walked in with a basin of hot water and I tried to melt the plaster of Paris, but that only succeeded in tearing it off my eyebrows. Luckily, they remained unscathed. I couldn’t say the same about my eyelashes which were stuck fast.
“OH MY GOD, RAY! IT WON’T COME OFF!” I wailed.
We called poison control. We called the hospital. We called 911. No one knew what to do. No one had ever had a caller complaining of their eyelashes embedded in plaster of Paris. I slithered into my jacket and Ray shoved my feet into my shoes, and I felt myself being lifted into the air as he carried me to his Jeep. I plopped down with a resounding thump into the seat as Ray drove me to the closest ER.
“Ray.” A lump formed in my throat. “I’m so sorry.”
His hand simply trembled and he patted my knee, like he always did.
---
There’s a certain embarrassment that flushes your face when you have to visit the Emergency Room. Especially if you weren’t there totally by accident. Always the explorer plunging blindly into the great blue yonder. Ray had led me into the ER, a towel completely covering my head. Those in the waiting room stared at me in shock--or at least that's what I was told. I couldn't see a thing. I started to imagine a life without sight, and became overwhelmed.
Oh God. I could remember their confused voices. “Wow, this is new!” the doctor had chuckled. I had wanted to sink into the linoleum, but instead I lay fitfully on a bed for hours until they could figure out what to do. This simply hadn’t happened before.
They had finally settled on good old-fashioned ripping-it-off-my-face. I wonder if they knew what it felt like to have their facial features wrenched off.
My wild screams had filled the hospital.
The nurses and doctor who had delivered me from blindness now stood across the hall with bemused but sympathetic expressions coloring their faces.
“RAY! They’re GONE!” Tears stung my tender red eyes and nestled in the crevices the plaster had left on my cheeks. I should have been thankful that I could see again but my vanity got in the way.
In their efforts to remove the plaster, the doctors had removed every single eyelash.
“Stop it. You’re still the most beautiful girl in the world,” Ray murmured, ruffling my hair. “You’re one tough cookie.” It’s odd, but, I looked up at him and believed him.
Sometimes you lose your pride, and other times you lose your eyelashes. They grow back within a couple months. Eventually, we grow from our mistakes.
And eventually, we succeed in overcoming our obstacles, too.