Belle: Mom, stop it! I can’t BELIEVE the things you tell total strangers over the internet!

Me: What strangers? I feel like I know these people! They’re awesome!

Belle: Mom, internet people can turn out to be psychotic ax murderers! You KNOW that! You’re too trusting! You’re like a little KID!

Me: Little kid? Me? Why I oughtta. . . .Do we have any more popsicles?

Belle: At least you haven’t told them about your cataract surgery. That would definitely be too gross.

Me: Hey that’s right! And listen, little miss smarty pants, “little kids” don’t HAVE cataract surgery. So there.

Belle: Mom, honestly.

Me: See? I win. I think. . . . .

Ahem.

My Cataract Surgery: An Essay In How To Remain Dignified Whilst Undergoing A Procedure**

Step One: Do not shriek like a banshee when your extremely attractive eye doctor tells you that “it’s time.”

Step Two: Look up horror stories on the internet. Say fogey things like “pshaw” when you read a particularly gruesome one. That won’t be YOU. You’re cooler than that. And far too young for this surgery. It’s a fluke. You’re an exception. Yes.

Step Three: Tell everybody you’ve decided to pay a man a million dollars to stick a sharp stick in your eye.

Step Four: Schedule the procedure for the day before school starts.

Step Five: Eat lots of pizza the night before your pre-dawn surgery is scheduled.

Step Six: Take three or four thick novels to the hospital with you, as just because you’re scheduled for 6 a.m. doesn’t mean you’re going to be wheeled anywhere at 6 a.m.

Step Seven: At 8:30 a.m., ask for more popsicles. Those grape ones are pretty good.

Step Eight: When the nurses come in at ten a.m. to hook you up to a thousand little hoses via a thousand little blunt needles, smile and be nice. You’re lying down and they’re standing up, and they’re all armed.

Step Nine: After forty minutes, they still haven’t managed to find a viable bloodline. Keep smiling. They’re more frustrated about it than you are. You can wear long sleeves to hide the bruises.

Step Ten: Gratefully thank the passing heart surgeon who graciously takes over the intravenous situation, striking blood with the first stab. Include him in your will, which at this point is starting to sound like something you’ll need soon.

Step Eleven: Start babbling stupidly BEFORE the drugs actually hit your system. This will confuse everybody and they’ll start conversing about it over your inert body whilst awaiting your utter paralysis to kick in. It’s fun to eavesdrop. Usually.

Step Twelve: When the eye doctor asks you to scoot down a little more towards the end of the table, coyly inform him that the last time a masked man asked you to do that, he handed you a newborn child before it was over. When he tells you that he used to be an obstetrician, agree with him that old habits die hard.

Step Thirteen: Sing an inappropriate song all through the procedure, and don’t remember that at all.

Step Fourteen: Discover after the fact that two of the nurses are sisters of your coworkers, and they love to gossip.

Step Fifteen: Discover that the song you sang all through your surgery was “Gangster’s Paradise.” Which you didn’t even know you knew all the words to. But apparently you do.

Step Sixteen: Go home and sleep for hours and hours and hours and hours. Or maybe it was fifteen minutes, you don’t know for sure, hell, you’re high as a kite.

Step Seventeen: Show up for the First Day of School, groggy and whiny, and with the most incredible shiner anyone has ever seen. Tell strangers your husband hit you. When they start to commiserate, tell them you broke his nose. Ask the group if they’d all care to meet at the Hideaway after school.

Step Eighteen: When the principal calls you into his office and sternly orders you to remove your against-the-rules sunglasses, say “Certainly” and do it. And laugh when he telll you to go ahead and wear them for a few days anyway.

Step Nineteen: When the kids come into your classroom that first period of that first day, tell them you’re friendly and perfectly reasonable, UNLESS somebody talks back. Then remove your sunglasses and say, “Any questions?”

Step Twenty: When the swelling goes down and the discoloration finally fades completely (around Christmastime) you will realize that you’re having an exceptionally good year.

Step Twenty-One: It won’t last.

Step Twenty-Two: But when you did have it, you HAD it.

Step Twenty-Three: Six months later, pay the eye doctor a million dollars. Your school’s insurance gave him nothing but $75 and the runaround.

Step Twenty-Four: Run into your eye doctor at a social function, remind him who you are, and thank him. Tell him you really appreciate him. Because, even though he’s a jackass when his school-age kids are concerned, he’s a crackerjack of a doctor.

**(apologies to Muzik)