The boy was playing with his little metal airplane. The airplane was on a string and he was standing with one arm up in the air, swinging that little plane around his head. Up and around the boy’s head went the tidy craft, mesmerizing, until my sister got up from what she was doing, turned, and walked into the little plane’s path.
She went down fast, hands covering her eye. Our friend screamed for our mothers. The boy stood with the string in a spaghetti pile near the grounded plane.
“She fine, she fine.” The little boy said.
Clearly, my sister wasn’t fine and mama took her straight to our ophthalmologist. He was a neat man, small and impeccably pressed. I was perched on a metal chair and my sister was stiff and formal in the big chair in his office.
“Well,” the doctor started, “there is a sliver of metal in your eye, my child. You could go to the emergency room in the hospital, or, if you think you can sit very still, I can take out that sliver of metal and I will give you a stick of Fruit Stripe gum. What’ll it be?”
“I’ll sit still,” my not-yet-in-kindergarten-aged sister decided.
She got that stick of gum and she earned my admiration, because I knew I could never be that brave.