On Not Looking At the Sun

Let me tell you a tale.

The tale begins in Arvada, CO. I was a wee lass of 7-8 and we were visiting my great aunt. During this visit there was a heavily publicized solar eclipse. I had heard about it on the news and latched onto one VERY important piece of information.

Perk up your ears everyone, this is important!!! During an eclipse do not look directly at the sun! They make little boxes and glasses if you feel the need to look at it during this time, but for the love of crackers do not look at the sun without such devices.

Now, as an adult, I know that this is not that big of a deal. An eclipse doesn't really last that long and the odds of accidentally looking directly at the sun and burning your retinas to a crisp is very very low. But, as a kid, this absolutely terrified me. I was not just afraid of looking at the sun, but also feared being in any sunlight before or after the eclipse. Who knows? Perhaps this light had magical blinding powers too!

Really, during times of threat it is better to be safe then sorry.

So I found out what time the eclipse was scheduled for and about 30 minutes before hand I camped out in a windowless bathroom with a bunch of toys. I also brought my 3 year old sister with me for her protection and my mom in for MY protection. If eyeballs were going to become a premium commodity after this debacle we were going to need an adult to defend us. At least a couple people in the family would have sight after all this was over. Apparently my dad and brother didn't care about their eyes as I could not convince them to join me.

As I was sitting in the bathroom I imagined all the poor fools who had not hid in their bathrooms were probably wandering around with no eyeballs. I wanted to peek outside and see what was going on, but I didn't want to risk there being any mutant blinding sunlight in the hallway. I didn't hear any screaming and panic, but maybe they were all in shock.

As it turned out, when we exited the bathroom about 15 minutes post eclipse there were no exploded eyeballs anywhere, nor any mutant sunshine.

However, I stayed in the basement away from windows til sundown just to be safe.