I stabbed my little sister Emily in the eye with a pencil. It was extremely sharp. I spent considerable time with the wall mounted pencil sharpener at my dad's carpet store on 2nd Street in Selma's 'historic' downtown. All of us kids used to spend a lot of time at the store when we were little. We became regulars at the store, much like my dad's secretary, the book keeper, and the occasional carpet installer that would come by.
The carpet store was a great place to play, so many colors and soft surfaces to drag my little fingers across. He also sold linoleum. I love the smell of new linoleum. We would nap on a pile of carpet samples underneath a desk. The store had a old western motif, with barn wood accents on some of the displays and the lighting. The show room was nice, but our play there was limited for fear that at any minute a customer might come in. I never remember any customers.
The serious play happened in the back room were the carpet was stored in huge rolls piled on each other, and in the alley behind the store. The back room was always dark and had an ugly bathroom with a bar of soap that was always dirty. We would climb all over the rolls of carpet. They were usually rolled with the nap on the inside and the rough back of the carpet on the outside, but sometimes they were the other way around with the fuzzy part out, and I know this because the stack of rolls was always so inviting to jump on.
My dad moved the rolls around with an old forklift that had a long steel rod attachment on the front, rather than forks, that my dad called a stinger. It looked like something that would be used by mideval carpet men to joust atop their valiant fork lifts. The forklift ran on propane, at the time that seemed to make much more sense than it does now that I write it. But it ran on propane and had the best smelling exhaust ever. My dad would let us sit on the propane tank (padded by a carpet sample) behind the drivers seat as he would wiz about skewering the carpet rolls, shuffling them like cards. He always drove with just one hand on the steering knob and the other on the lift controls to make the fork lift come alive. When the fork lift was idle I would sit in the driver seat and pretend I was driving with one hand on the steering knob. The steering knob, attached to the steering wheel and permitting quick turning, was one of the best inventions ever. Real jobs involve the use of a steering knob. Sometimes all of the kids would line up next to the stinger and my dad would slowly raise it in the air. We would all grab on and he'd lift us to what seemed like very unsafe heights and then quickly move the stinger up and down to try and shake us off. We would fall and laugh and ask him to do it again.
The doors out of the back of the building to the alley were clad in sheet metal and completely unmovable until I reached the upper grades of elementary school. But they were usually open a crack so we could slip out into the alley. They alley was a gold mine, and by gold I mean garbage. There was a huge dumpster that the carpet store shared with neighboring businesses, and they were always throwing out the best stuff. The hair dresser next door would toss out bald heads made of plastic and Styrofoam, and clumps of cut hair that didn't seem odd to throw at each other. Other business would throw out old displays with metal to bend and plastic to break. Some times we'd find burnt out fluorescent tubes that would pop when dropped on the ground or smashed by a rock. The building across the alley had a window that was all full of holes. One of the holes was in the shape of the president on the nickel, whatever his name is. We had nothing to do with those holes.
But sometimes after 5, or during lunch we would head up to the show room and play with the tools of the secretarial trade. The staple remover was like a dragon, letter openers were knives and swords. The paper clip holder with the magnetic ring opening was a wonder of science. It took a certain juvenile skill to stick the paper clips around the inside edge of the ring, and then build a tower of clips, each level only able to use a fraction of the magnetic power of the previous level, until the whole thing would fall before any definite climax. We would staple nothing, and the bent staple would look like eyeglasses. Then we'd staple another staple through one of the loops, and so on to create a useless chain.
And there was the wall mounted pencil sharpener that was often missing its outer case that is supposed to collect the wood shavings. My dad simply stationed a garbage can underneath the pencil sharpener and the problem of the pencil shavings was solved. Without the outer case you could watch the two grinding wheels work the tip of a pencil into a precision instrument. I would often break tips by accident just to turn the crank around and around and watch the grinders work the blunted tip back into a sharp point. I remember wondering what would happen if I sharpened my finger, what the grinders would feel like against my finger nail and skin. Unfortunately for Emily, I must have used up all my good sense in the decision not to give it a try.
The way I remember it, stabbing Emily in the eye with an extremely sharp pencil was a complete and unfortunate accident. I was young, very, very, very young, and she was a year and a half younger. I had been working on a pencil for a while, probably broke it a few times just to resharpen it and let the shavings float down to the bottom of the trash can to lay there among paper clips and staple chains. I stood close to the secretary's desk, with my back to the pencil sharpener and the extremely sharp pencil gripped in my left fist with the eraser down and the point up. I then raised my arm, bending at the elbow, and the pencil point went over my shoulder where there should have been only space, but instead there was Emily, right behind me, with her face directly in the space above my shoulder, and she was accidentally stabbed in the eye. Well, the eye lid actually, the left eye lid a good 3/16ths of an inch from her left eye ball. The lead is still in there, ask her and she'll show it to you, a green-grey dot close enough to her eye to give you the creeps.
I have often thought about the stabbing, and how unlucky both Emily and I were that she just happened to be standing right behind me when I just happened to be executing the completely reasonable movement of raising a pencil, sharpened to the precision of a surgical instrument, over my shoulder to the space that should not have been occupied by her face. That is the definition of unlucky. Right? Right? Riiiiiiight .
It has only been the last few years that I've begun to face the possibility that it was not unlucky, or even an accident, but that I stabbed my sister in the face with a pencil, and that I aimed for her left eye. Writing it makes me ill. I was a child, and children do stupid things, but what kind of a kid was I? Did my parents think I'd end up as some sort of psycho? I stabbed my little sister in the eye with a pencil, for crying out loud. I don't remember that she did anything to me, I don't remember being mad, I just remember a really sharp pencil and the story I invented to make myself feel better.
It has been more than a quarter century since then, and it's high time for an apology. Emily, I am sorry I stabbed you in the eye with a very sharp pencil. I am sorry for giving you a tattoo against your will. I am sorry for using up one of those guardian angel blessings that I'm sure are not unlimited. I am sorry for almost making you blind in one eye and for almost giving you the nickname lefty. I am sorry for almost forcing you to be a pirate every Halloween.
Happy Birthday, I hope no one ever stabs you in the eye again.
Love, Jared
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