Last year my brother Matt got married in Vermont, which is a long ways away from Georgia. We were very excited for the event and also for the opportunity to travel to Vermont. I had never been to that part of the world so my wife and I decided to turn it into a little vacation and drive through New Hampshire to French Canada with a final destination of Quebec City. My wife is very good at planning excursions and made up a little binder with all the different things we were going to do, that’s how I knew this would be a serious adventure. Less serious adventures do not get their own binder.
To tell this story I need to go back about 10 years to a prank my wife played on me. One morning when I was getting in my car to go to work, sleepy-eyed and cranky, I sat down, cranked up the car, and the minute I put my foot on the gas, “Bang! Pop! Bang!”, something went off at my feet. I slammed on the brakes and another “Bang! Pop! Bang! Went off. I thought my car was about to explode. She came out of the bushes laughing. She had put those little snap poppers fireworks that you can buy at the grocery store all over my floorboard. Hilarious. When I got my equilibrium back and changed my pants, I vowed to her I would get her back. I didn’t know when, I didn’t know how, but I would get her back.
Ten years later I was in the grocery store and passed a fireworks display and there at the front were those snapper pops. I had forgotten about my vow of revenge until that moment, then it all came rushing back. I purchased the snappers and went back home trying to figure out how I would strike. My wife was sitting on the sofa diligently planning out our trip to the wedding that was still two months out. I went into the restroom and saw I had forgotten to put the lid down and then it came to me. I knew where I would put the snappers.
With the trap set, I just needed to wait. As is common with me I quickly forgot what I had done and an hour or so later we needed to run some errands together. I grabbed our son and told her I’d be waiting for her in the car. I really regret that I was not in the house to hear her scream, but after the explosion, I got more than enough to make up for it. She was so mad at me and I could not stop laughing...until I looked at her face…
The toilet explosion was so intense of a scare, such a sense of shock, that it caused a tiny blood vessel to burst in her eye. At first, it was a teeny-tiny streak, it didn’t hurt, it didn’t cause any loss of vision, but over the next week, it began to spread out, more and more and more, until at least 75% of her eye was blood red. Not blood red like you’ve had your eyes open in chlorine all afternoon but red like you just had an accidental spill in the Red Cross bus.
I told her it didn’t look so bad but that was an obvious lie. My wife is a preschool teacher and the eye was so gruesome it made her children cower. And after some intense scouring of the internet, we learned that it wasn’t going away anytime soon. Like, months. Deadman walking.
For the next couple of weeks before that fateful trip, I got an earful every single morning. She had picked out a beautiful dress for this wedding. She was looking forward to seeing family and taking pictures in front of majestic waterfalls and tranquil Canadian meadows. I tell you, those weeks before that wedding began the most prayerful time I can recall of this sorted life.
Slowly the red began to fade into a yellowish color, and the yellow back to white, and slowly I was able to start breathing again. The day of the wedding there was still some red in there but nothing like it was and because of that, I was granted a half-pardon, and am still alive today. This whole thing was an accident. I know that. She knows that. But something tells me ten years from now I better watch where I squat.