Jimmy Dean

Thanks for the many kind words from perfect strangers stopping by this site. I am still knee deep in e-mail responses to people, I do know. I have got to work on my pen pal skills. This reminds me of a funny note I received once but first a little background. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

When I was in 9th grade, some jerk (we'll call him Jimmy Dean) tried to get me to fight him during lunch at school. Fisticuffs and everything. Now having just taken a summers worth of karate lessons, I could have turned him into a pretzel and handed him his spleen. However, my pacifist upbringing at work, I decided that fighting was not the answer. As I turned away from Jimmy, he punched me in the eye as I turned away. He hit me hard enough that I saw a flash of light and heard a crack.

As it turns out Jimmy had fractured my eye, BEHIND THE EYEBALL. This trapped a small piece of my eye muscle causing me to have double vision for a few weeks. I saw more optometrists, ophthalmologist, and any other form of eye doctor than imaginable. They all said that after the swelling went down that the muscle would loosen and I would be no worse for wear. However, fighter pilot was off my list as potential jobs. In the meanwhile, while the eye was healing I had to wear a patch. Not to mention some gargantuan protective glasses for PE.

Since the school had a strict no fighting policy, Jimmy was expelled and sent to a different school. I, however had to go to school with a PATCH on my eye of the Robert Louis Stevenson variety. Somehow during this whole ordeal I had become incredibly attractive to one of my classmates (one of the daytime soap stars wore a patch in 1988, maybe this had something to do with it). Glenda (her real name was Christine, oh crap) wrote me notes all the time during French class. I guess my lack of interest in her had shown in the fact that I was not writing back quite fast enough for her. Glenda was growing impatient with me (and later played a very mean spirited prank on me that I might describe tomorrow).

One of her final notes to me said, "Did Jimmy Dean break your hand as well as your eye?"

Sorry for all the build-up with such a meager payoff. I think Jimmy Dean did break my hand.