A noble rite of passage

I present to you my daughter’s first black eye, courtesy of her nightstand, which happened to be piled high with books at the time, of course.

 

Her Daddy had many black eyes growing up, courtesy of any number of hard objects coming in contact with his orbital socket, including bicycle handlebars, doors, canoe paddles, baseballs, inadvertent elbows, a fiberglass vaulting pole, a headboard, and the clenched fists of friends and enemies alike.

This black eye, my first, is a mystery.

My mother told me that I emerged from my bedroom one day, crying my eyes out with blood pouring from my forehead and my eye already turning an ugly shade of yellow. The stiches used to close to the wound in my forehead left a cross-shaped scar that was replaced fifteen ears later with a decidedly less distinctive mark by the windshield of a Datsun B-210.