Before I go to bed, I'll tell you a story. I was walking Zadie (it seems like all of my stories start this way, doesn't it) and she went directly to her favorite spot, a neighbor's garden, to poo. I like to imagine that she prefers this spot because the plants give her a little privacy. Now, being a good citizen, I always bring bags to pick up the poo so unsuspecting gardeners don't get it on their miniature rakes and shovels. As I bent down to pick up the poo, a very small tree branch poked me in the eye. It happened so suddenly that I didn't close my eye in time.
I paused in this half-bent-over position, confused. I hadn't seen any tree branch between my face and the ground, but sure enough, there had clearly been one directly in the path of my eyeball. After thinking about this for a moment, I stood up. I heard a tiny =s n a p != and realized that it was the sound of the little branch breaking off the little tree, still in my eye. It was hard for me to believe that I had a tiny tree branch sticking out of my eye, BUT I DID! It had slid in between my eyeball and my eye socket. When I pulled it out, still too struck by the million-to-one odds of this happening to be upset, I SWEAR TO YOU that I could feel the tiny branch gently tickle the inside of my eye socket. It was perhaps the strangest sensation I've ever felt. I'm not sure that anything other than my eyeball has ever touched the inside of my eye socket before. I was reassured to discover that the sensation was not remotely erotic, because the idea of reproducing that situation on purpose is a little upsetting.
After that I was fine, but as we walked, I couldn't stop thinking about how weird it was that I had stood in the street for a moment with a tree branch poking out of my eye. I wish I could have seen myself.
