Eye eye.

Most people can remember back to their childhood days.  Usually this memory goes back to around the age of 3 ½ years old. One of the earliest things I can remember is a little tricycle I had when I was about three. Unfortunately, I cannot be more accurate than that, as I did not have the foresight at that age to keep a diary. In fact, I still don’t. I did for a short while, but I found I was writing ‘nothing special happened today’ for most of the days. This is not so much a diary of events more of roadmap to depression, so I stopped.

Anyway, I digress. Going back to my childhood memory of my tricycle, I can remember that even then I was something of a petrol-head, and I modified my tricycle to be more like a motorcar. It was nothing as spectacular as fitting a V8 Chevy engine or even putting on fat tyres and wider wheels or lowering the suspension (I don’t do that even now!)  No, the major modification to my tricycle was the installation of a gear lever.

Now, there may be those of you who wonder why I would install a gear lever when my vehicle was not even fitted with a gearbox. You have to remember at the age of 3-4 such trifles as having a gearbox to connect to the gear lever would not be considered. As I remember, it was a simple modification. The seat on my tricycle was made of pressed metal, and was bolted to the frame; one of these bolts was missing and the needle could be inserted into the hole, thus the needle would protrude from between the rider’s legs, emulating a floor shift fitted to cars in the UK at that time.

In those days, my mother used to sew while she watched over me. Her sewing machine was mounted on an ironing board, which she used to set up in the living room. I was riding my tricycle there when I must’ve done something to hurt myself. Like any child of that age when presented with pain, my immediate reaction was to burst into tears. This would usually result in my being consoled by my mother. However, on this occasion it resulted in a piercing scream which stopped my crying instantly. Young children when they cry have a tendency to rub their eyes, usually with their hands balled into a fist, and indeed this is how I was crying. My sudden yowls of pain had

caused my mother to look up from her sewing, only to see your one and only child screaming with a knitting needle appearing to protrude from his right eye. In fact, the ball on the end of the needle was firmly grasped in my fist, where it had been at the onset of my pain, the pointy end being wrenched from the seat as I put my fists to my eyes.

Obviously, my mother was unaware of that fact, until I pulled my hands away to see why she screamed, and my right eye was clearly intact in my right eye socket, only now much wider than usual as I had never heard my mother scream in that way.

Needless to say my days of having a gear lever ended at that point (if you’ll pardon the pun.)