A bar brawl, fight with a chair and unexpected bonk of the heads: There's no hiding black eyes

A black eye; this unwanted baggage always seems to appear at the worse times. There's no hiding the blacks, blues, purples, reds, yellows and greens no matter how hard you try. The three incidents below really happened, but how they were "covered up" is interesting. Notice how the two male stories differ from mine.

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Last week, Andrew was sitting in an old orange school chair in front of the kid's computer, leaning back and rocking as he anticipated his next gaming move. All of the sudden I heard a WHOOSH / THUMP and then Nicholas' concerned voice:

"Oh! Are you okay, Andrew?"

I quickly turned my head and found Andrew on the floor, hands covering his left eye. I was surprised he wasn't crying, because when I peeled away his fingers I could see the bruise already forming. The chair had flipped with him and the bottom of the leg had come back around and poked him in the eye (not directly, thank goodness, but close enough). We applied ice immediately, but the next morning it was apparent that we could have done nothing to stop nature's course of healing.

A few days later, right when the boldest colors of a black eye usually peak, Andrew had his award ceremony for earning his blue belt in TaeKwonDo (yeah, Drew!). I have to wonder if everyone thought he got his shiner while sparring. A few asked him, and this is what Andrew said:

"I got in a fight with my chair and won."

He did look like a true prize fighter.

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Just two days before graduation from Non-Commissioned Officers (NCO) School in Paris Island, North Carolina, Pete was in a fight. The E-Club (Enlisted) was a well-frequented spot for the guys back then; kind of like an oasis in the middle of the desert. Of course, I'm sure Pete was only a victim and could never have stirred up trouble, so I will pass on the details. The important thing is that he had a big ole' shiner on the day of graduation; and he was graduating #1 in his class. When the commanding general of the base handed Pete his award, he whispered these words:

"What happened to your eye?"

"Oh, I just slipped in the shower," Pete mumbled.

"Does the other guy look that bad?" Asked the general with a wink.

Pete showed perfect proof that he was a tough marine as he walked across the stage with a serious expression on his colorful face.

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Then there was the time I was stranded in Galveston while on a college weekend trip. I bumped heads with a friend on the seawall while waiting for my summer roommate Mitzie to show up (she had abandoned me at a night club, but that's another story). My mother came to visit me the next week. I tried to disguise my shiner with gobs of eye makeup, but there was no fooling good ole' Mom. I could tell she was onto me when she said this as soon as she saw me:

"My God, Laurie. You have on so much eye makeup. Since when did you start wearing all those different colored eye shadows?"

"Oh, you know Mitzie. She works at the Estee Lauder counter. She was practicing new methods on me."

"I see," Mom answered with a quizzical look.

I did not appear rough and tough; I looked like a little girl who put on too much eye shadow while playing dress-up. And I caked on the camouflage everyday until my eye returned to normal.

Did you notice that Andrew and Pete bragged about their black eyes, but I tried to cover mine up? To men, shiners are war stories. Women do whatever they can to hide their scarlet letters and keep them a secret. But we're really only fooling ourselves. The truth is visible in the oily blobs making rings around our eyes.

Murphy's Law (or is it Kolp's?)

Yeah! Katie's dance recital is over and everything went smoothly. After last night's fiasco and this morning's surprise, I was not sure how things would pan out. But I said my prayers and went forward, and everything seemed to fall in place.
Let me back track and tell you about last night. You see, Katie was in four numbers, three of them all within the first part of the first half of the show. But when we had our practices at the theatre Friday and Saturday, everything was out of order. When the dress rehearsal began, we realized Katie had only one dance in-between two of her dances, and she had to change tights, leotards and shoes (this year was a non-costume year). Well, Katie is very modest and we spent too much time looking for a private place in the dressing room for her to change. Suddenly we heard someone calling for her, Katie began to get upset, we hurried, someone came to help and by the time we made it to the stage, her number was over. She was devastated that she had missed her dance. We did learn something from this though- she would have to change backstage, with lots of help, and that is what happened today. I sat on the side of the stage and waited to help. The teachers came and helped, too, plus Katie layered pink, black and tan tights to make it easier...and, we made it! I told Katie she should feel like Hannah Montana because performers have to change so fast, they have a lot of people working on them. That made Katie feel pretty special.
The next snafu occured this morning. You see, when we got home at 11:00 last night, I decided I should wash all of Katie's dance clothes so they would smell fresh for recital. Thank goodness I kept the finale outfit out- it is nonwashable. Anyway, I'm sure you guessed what I discovered when I pulled her stuff out of the dryer. More crayon marks. All over her dancewear. And she needed to be at the theatre in an hour. Sigh. What could I do at this time? I stuck my head all the way in the dryer, looking for the culprit (I was sure I had gotten all the crayons out), and I found two small left over crayons that had settled down in the groove between the drum and back wall. I got those suckers out so fast you would think I had found gold. Then I cleaned the dryer real quick with bleach and went inside, head down in contemplation on what I would say to Katie. I checked everything over not once but twice, then asked Pete what he thought, and we decided that the marks were so minimal that they would not be visible on the stage. But Katie would have to wear some older jeans for one routine because the jeans I had just bought were very noticeably marked up. Katie almost started crying when she found all this out, but when I asked her what else could we do, she nodded in understanding like a big girl. I was so proud of her acceptance (I could learn a thing or two from her).
After all these roadblocks, the real deal went off beautifully, thank you Lord. Katie was a dancing queen and felt like a glamorous girl, I could tell, with all that make-up she had to wear. I told her she was getting good experience with make-up so that when she was forty-one like me, she'd know how. Then she looked at me, smiled and said, "But mom, you're twenty-nine, remember? So I can start wearing make-up then!" (I always tell my kids I stopped aging at twenty-nine as a joke). 'Don't grow up too fast, I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep up,' I thought, as I watched her head off for the dressing room.