What It's Like to Be Blind Part I: The Water-Rocket Incident (aka How It Happened)

Now, as I'm sure most of you are aware, I am not blind.

However, as most of you are not aware, I did experience an accident about a month ago, early December, wherein I lacerated my eye-lid, effectively blinding me for the better part of a week. 

I currently work teaching science lessons to children as a part of an after-school program here in L.A. On this particular day, I was teaching a special event, a Saturday party for a local soccer team and their parents. In addition to after-school lessons, we also provide entertaining science demos fun kids and parents alike. Wink. The event was held out-doors and it was a beautiful day in sunny Southern California. I had already finished our experiments involving dry-ice, "Say it with me now, Sub-li-mate!" I had wafted the cold fog (dry-ice + water)  over the children seated on the ground, made dry-ice soap bubbles you can catch with your hands, and shot some very cold water into children's faces (and my own). The kids were excited, all was well, and next up: Rockets!  

First, an electrical-circuit ignition rocket, which is exactly what it sounds like: you connect the wires from the bottom of the rocket to remote control, and when you press the button, "Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six...!" the circuit closes and the electrical current starts the ignition in the rocket. The children thought this was just incredible and ran across the field with a chorus of, "Yaaaay!" to catch the rocket as it came back down to Earth. 

"What should we do now, children? DO IT AGAIN!" 

"YAAAAYY!" So we did it again. 

Then, injury impending, I set up the water-bottle rockets. A water-bottle rocket is a pretty simple apparatus where you have a stand made of PVC pipe, and you take a 2-liter soda bottle, put some water  in it, plug it, and then pump it full of air until the pressure is so great the bottle flies off the stand, fifty feet into the air, spraying water everywhere. To put it simply, I was a thoughtless idiot in this particular moment. We pump the bottle full of air via a bicycle pump. You are supposed to have about fifteen to twenty feet between you and the rocket while you vigorously pump the bicycle hose. I was standing about two feet away. The children, who were counting the number of pumps it would take, reached Sixteen when the rocket lifted off, and I understood in a moment of dreadful realization and anguish-filled resignation, I was standing far too close, without goggles. My eye closed in fight/flight response while my brain made one conscious plea to God and the universe, "No!" 

Of course, it was too late. The plastic soda bottle, meant to shoot fifty-feet up, hit my face and bounced to the ground. I immediately turned around and grabbed a paper-towel to cover my eye so the kids wouldn't be able to see my face. 

In the aftermath that ensued, many very kind and caring parents helped me to hand out slime to the kids and load all of my equipment into the trunk of my car. A woman with medical expertise came up and looked at my eye, told me the eye-lid was cut, and "Go to a hospital, really. Go to a hospital." 

Beautiful photo of my face waiting in the ER. If you look closely, you can see the red line that was the laceration on the interior of the lid. Some nice bruising down the cheek bone as well. 

Before long I drove myself to the ER. My right eye-lid was lacerated, meaning cut, slit open so that the ER doctor called the on-call ophthalmologist so around midnight I was laying on a surgery bed with a very nice doctor with a Yiddish accent sewing my eye-lid back together.