Eye Didn't See That Coming

An elbow flattened me like like a truck and in an instant, my life changed

Way back in seventh grade, Chute Middle School held its annual picnic in Glenview’s Harms Woods, a suburb northwest of Chicago. It was a quintessential mid-70s scene – puffy spring clouds, potato-sack races, Oscar Mayer hot dogs, and the whole student body running around like kids in a Tang commercial.

Around 2:00 p.m., we all gathered for a softball game, teachers included, that got so unexpectedly competitive we decided to continue it back at school.

The encore didn’t disappoint. There were lead changes, over-the-top drama, and surprisingly elevated play from thirteen-year-olds who still laughed at the word “duty.” Eventually, it was agreed: one last inning. The school bell had rung half an hour earlier, and parents were now pacing the sidewalk like station wagon chauffeurs in a 70s car pool lane.

With two outs, a tie score, and the bases loaded, Mr. Rochelle – one of the school’s more athletic teachers – strode into the batter’s box. I was out in left field, stealing a glance at my classmate Andrew White in center. Andrew had hit his growth spurt early and was built like a college tailback.

On the first pitch, Mr. Rochelle launched a towering pop-up into the perfect blue sky. It took a beat, but I spotted the white speck a few hundred feet above me. Andrew and I instantly realized the same thing: it was coming down just ahead of us. We charged—me low, Andrew high.

My next memory is the sensation of being hit by a truck.

Andrew’s elbow caught my right eye square on, blowing out my orbital bone. The pain was searing. Blood started running down my throat. Worst of all, my eye muscle had slipped into the fracture and was stuck – I couldn’t move the eye, and I was seeing double, a sensation not unlike the Simpsons ride at Universal Studios. Nauseous, I rolled my head and vomited blood. The entire schoolyard rushed over.

Game over, man.

As Mr. Rochelle helped me up, my minister’s-son vocabulary limitations vanished. One of the bullies at school had taught me how to string “god-damn mother-fucking asshole” together years earlier, and it became my mantra as we made our way to the nurse’s office. Anyone who asked how I was doing got the full swear-word sermon.

Given the severity of the injury, I probably should’ve been taken straight to the hospital. Instead, I began a multi-hour doctor-hopping odyssey in the Carlson Building before finally heading to Evanston Hospital’s ER. I remember being passed from an optometrist to Dr. Charles Weingarten, an ENT, clutching a small trash can someone had given me because I kept throwing up blood.

I was ultimately admitted to the surgical floor. The next day, Dr. Weingarten made an incision under my lower lid, cleaned debris from the trauma, and inserted a titanium plate to stabilize the eye so it could rotate again. When I woke up groggy in recovery, I had an eye patch – and a roommate: the son of the owner of Evanston’s Tom Thumb hobby store. He’d been hit head-on by a car while skateboarding and had a catalog of injuries far worse than mine. A few days later, I realized just how lucky I was: I was going to keep my eye.

Back at a follow-up appointment in the Carlson Building, I still didn’t fully grasp the seriousness of the injury until I saw my mother crying as Dr. Weingarten explained how the bruises would fade and the incision would eventually be invisible. Then he added I would not become the professional baseball player I had dreamed of. Returning to school with an eye patch days later earned me thirty minutes of fame. Kids whispered, “I heard they took your eye out and showed it to you.” Sure, why not.

There are moments in life when everything changes in an instant. Looking back on that spring day, so many variables could have shifted the outcome – the game ending earlier, Mr. Rochelle grounding out, Andrew’s elbow catching me at a slightly different angle. My life’s trajectory tilted subtly from that moment on. Playing clarinet and saxophone became uncomfortable because of sinus pressure, so I drifted toward more artistic pursuits – eventually discovering a passion for design.

I wouldn’t call it a “butterfly effect,” but the unexpected moments shape us. As we age, it gets harder to push ourselves beyond the familiar, to reach for something new. Yet that moment – airborne, hands outstretched, fully expecting to make the game-winning catch – has stayed with me. It defined me.

That freak accident nudged me onto the creative path I was meant to follow. Life works in mysterious ways – some involving softballs, missed pop-ups, and the strange clarity that sometimes arrives only through dizzying double vision.