The Eye Patch

My dear, dear sister... This isn't what I think of you in. You did, however, convince me that you worked for Santa Claus... and I believed you up until the point that I didn't believe in Santa Claus... (If mom and dad read this - I STILL believe in Santa Claus. Ha.) If this offends you, I am sorry. That isn't its purpose. Its purpose is to keep me at an A in English... So, I am posting it on my blog... it's okay, no one reads it anyway.

P.S. I am sorry... sometimes the name is "Marie" and sometimes it's "Mary." I think I caught all of the mistakes (I switched the name halfway through) but, if not, I know that I may have this issue.

The Eye Patch
My sister and I were watching an old episode of “Recess.” I’d just gotten home, and it was a tradition that we did together every Wednesday.
My sister, Mary, was the older one. She definitely understood more about the world at the time then I did. Now, I believe it’s quite the other way around, but that’s a whole other story. But at the time, Mary was 13, a teenager, and therefore I believe she ruled the world and knew everything. I had been so in awe of her that I believed there was no one greater than her.
I was a gullible child too. I always believed everything, as long as Mary said it. I had been so gullible, that she was able to convince me that she worked for Santa Claus and that she lived in another dimension as a dragon.
I had bad eyesight as a child. A lazy eye, which they had caught early. At the time, I thought the fact that they’d caught it early was the worst thing that could happen. The optometrist had sent me eye patches in the mail that I had to wear with the ugliest glasses. (It didn’t help that I had a huge head and a skinny body and was already teased on a daily basis for looking like a character out of “Peanuts.”) They tried to make them appealing by putting a cat and other patterns on the front of it, but it didn’t help. During “Recess,” I didn’t have to wear the patch.
I didn’t understand why I had to wear the eye patch. I didn’t even understand that my eyesight was bad. I could read and see just fine. They didn’t explain to me that only the muscles in my right eye were developing and the muscles in my left eye weren’t. These are things that they should tell the 7-year-old. All I knew was that I was the first kid with glasses in the class and it had just set my path for life. I would be forever-four-eyed and never chosen first in gym.
Maybe I looked more forward to not wearing the patch than I did hanging out with Mary. Sometimes, when Mom wasn’t looking, Mary would even let me take off my glasses.
That afternoon, we were sitting on the cool leather of the very lived-in green couches, looking at the old television cabinet, Mary with her Pepsi and I with my Juicy Juice. This was our only sister time.
I looked forward to this moment every single Wednesday. I even wore a red baseball cap, like the character TJ, to school so I could be ready to watch the show.
The episode of “Recess” dealt with TJ and his gang of friends getting into trouble yet again. I believe the teacher was named Ms. Gokey. Well, Ms. Gokey was meditating on top of her desk and Mary pointed out that she didn’t shave her legs.
I didn’t understand this at the time, but I nodded and shook my head and laughed. Mary was my cool older sister and I just wanted her to like me. I always did this. She usually didn’t catch onto my act, but this time she turned to me.
“Riley, don’t laugh, you don’t know what the heck that means.”
I was seriously offended. My sister had just crushed my heart. I think at that moment, I would have rather worn the ugly patch over my eye.