Everybody Has a Story: The amazing adventures of Harriet’s eyeball

When I was 3 years old, I had to have my right eye removed.

One Halloween night when I was about 9 years old, my brother Robert wanted to be a monster. He put a pillow on his back and then put a cape over it so he looked like a hunchback. He came to me and said, “Sis, give me one of your old artificial eyes.”

Well, I thought he was going to put some gum in the middle of his forehead and stick it on that way. But, oh no! He stuck it in his own eye. It sucked onto his eye and began to hurt right away. He began lurching around like a monster, trying to get it out. Everyone was trying to stop him, and finally got him quieted down. It took some doing to get my artificial eye off his real one — by just getting a little finger slipped in behind, to break the suction.

We couldn’t get him to the doctor that night because Dad worked nights and had our only car. When he did go to the doctor, the doctor told Robert he was lucky he didn’t blind himself. Robert never wanted to be a monster again.

Later on, when I was a teenager, my brothers and I went to an Abbot and Costello movie. We lived in Washougal, and the theater was about a block and a half from our home. When we got there, of course, the theater was packed and we had to sit in the very last row, with a lot of people in front of us.

While we were watching the movie, I laughed so hard that I had tears in my eyes — so when I rubbed them, my eye fell out. Of course I quick got down on the floor and started looking for it. Robert had to open his big mouth and say, “Sis, why are you on the floor?” I told him my eye fell out and I was looking for it.

You should have seen the people jump up and move! I don’t where they moved to, but they didn’t come back.

I did find my eye and we enjoyed the rest of the movie, because we had a better view of the screen.

Nowadays, I always take my eye out in the shower to clean it and then put it back in. I did this one day and then took my little dog, Missy, for a walk. I met a neighbor down the street and talked to her for about half an hour. That night I looked in the mirror and: no eye! I went back to the shower and there it was, right where I left it.

That woman never made a face or anything when we were talking, and I wanted to apologize to her. But I haven’t seen her since.

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