The 2008 Dumbass Award

Things have been a bit miserable around here lately: break-ins, a demon plague of blowflies, and a serious case of the flu. In an attempt to shrug off the oppression and misery, I thought that I'd post this year's Dumbass Award. For those of you not familiar with this fine, time-honored tradition, click here.

To be honest, I'm not sure if it's the dumbest thing anyone has done for the award. I'd argue that my mother-in-law nearly cutting her little toe off with the pressure washer was a probably a dumber thing to do, but it wasn't as wild of a story. If I've learned anything from the Dumbass Award, it's that bribery works and that the telling of the story is almost more important than the story itself

Anyhow, the 2008 Dumbass Award goes to Aunt Candy and her daughter Alicia for spending two days on the side of the road looking for an eye.

Of course there is a back story.

Candy's older daughter, Misty, was working at the Pancake House in Conway, Arkansas. As is typical for Misty's luck, the Pancake House was being robbed, and an irate young man was holding a gun to her head as he bagged all the cash he could find. The owner of the Pancake House, a friend of the family (distant enough that I don't know his name) heard that his restaurant was being robbed on the police scanner (some people listen to these for fun apparently).

Distraught, he jumped in his car a drove off to the Pancake House. This resulted in a traffic accident which was serious enough to eject his glass eye through the car windshield.

A little later, Candy and Alicia were at his bedside in the ICU. He was unconscious. Neither was aware that he had a glass eye or that it was missing. All they knew was that there was a huge, caved-in hollow in the middle of his face. Alicia stood looking over Candy's shoulder at their friend.

"Mamma. Mamma."

"What is it?" Candy said.

"Look," Alicia said.

"At what?"

"His eye. Mamma, where's his eye?

About this time, their friend woke up. He was very distraught to discover that his glass eye was missing, and they vowed that they'd find it for him.

They spent hours over the next two days wandering up and down the shoulder of the highway near the scene of the accident, looking for his eye. People, mistaking Candy and Alicia for stranded motorists, would stop and ask if they needed help.

"Yes, we need help. We're looking for an eye." Some drove off, but a surprising number of motorists stopped and helped them look for the eye, including an entire crew of electricians from a local power utility at one point.

Lamentably, no eye was ever found.

The only bit of drama came when Alicia found a small, rubber ball. "Momma! Look! The eye! I found it!" Then she threw it at Candy. Candy did the typical movie slow-motion scene: the sprint, the dive, and the accompanying "Nooooooooooo!!!!"

At the end of the story's telling on Thanksgiving, Candy said, "Really, though. Only this family has crazy stories about stuff like this! Does anyone outside us have stories about glass eyes?!"

Debbie, a cousin of my mother-in-law's and a parole officer, said, "Sure, it happens all the time. My friend X----- was at the Western Sizzlin, and this guy choked. Well, she has her certification, so she did the Heimlich on him. Saved him, but she sure popped that glass eye right out of his head."

What is even better, is that after telling the story to my Dad and sister over lunch, my Dad asks my sister, "So, do you have any glass eye stories?" I think he meant this rhetorically. My sister says, "Actually, one of Matt's aunts has a glass eye. She had cancer."

My Dad looked momentarily shocked, I just laughed.