the eyeball.

We homeschooled in an era where homeschooling wasn’t quite fully accepted as legitimate. But we were surrounded by supportive friends and family who tried to provide educational experiences to make sure we were well rounded. Someone at our church decided to provide us the experience of dissecting a cow’s eyeball. Seems pretty cool at first thought. But here’s what really happened: There was a clear container in our fridge for what felt like forever that had a floating eyeball in it. Even the most casual opening of the fridge for food grazing purposes led to being unexpectedly assaulted by the gaze of a singular eyeball floating in goo (I’m really proud of this sentence). Finally, the day came. Janine no longer had to avoid the fridge for fear of the eye’s gaze. We pulled the eyeball out of the goo and began the educational experience. Mom dove right in. The knife drawer was opened, and the tools of choice were removed. It was time. At this point, I thought that dissections were cool. I was as close to mom as she would allow. There’s no way I was going to miss any action. Janine was still not so sure about the empty stare of the eyeball, so she kept her distance across the island. The procedure began. Mom grabbed a knife and began the incision. What should have taken one swipe of the knife ended up taking much longer than expected. The knife proved quite dull, which meant many swipes with the blade and increasing downward pressure. When the blade finally made it through, a moment of panic ensued. The incision matched with the pressure meant that the eyeball’s lens made a dramatic upward exit. We all screamed a bit but recovered eventually in fits of laughter.That day, we learned a valuable lesson. Don’t dissect with dull knives.