How many times I have heard the statement “your gonna poke your eye out” is not countable and yet today I heard it again. Tell me do any of you know anyone that has actually poked their eyes out while playing with something that parents and babysiters and other do gooders chastise their children with this ever present phrase?
There was a young guy, from Toronto, just this past Lag B’Omer, who lost an eye in a fireworks mishap.
I know a 12 year old boy who accidentally stabbed himself in the eye with an old bent metal wire. (His eye was OK, thank God. His mother was not OK).
When you’re a parent, you live in constant fear that your kid will get hurt. So you say stupid things like “Don’t jump on the couch- you can get killed that way.”
Sorry, but you’ll hear yourself saying it too someday, Hesh.
Hesh? No, never…. 🙂
That’s what I said to my date from Shulamis.
Whenever my kids make funny faces and lift their eyelids all the way up and roll their eyeballs back showing only the whites, it takes all my self control not to tell them that if they’re not careful their eyes will freeze and stay like that forever. I think that’s another standard “parents trying to scare you” line.
I didn’t go to Shulamis, but my response is not poked out and related to I C E ‘s. Welcome back, dude! About freakin’ time!
Eyes do get injured. When I was a young mother, a neighborhood kid lost sight in an eye when kids were playing with rocks.
Is that from the Geico commercial?
“…and nobody poked an eye out”
I don’t like it and, lulei demistafina, have never said it. But I have said – to friends, not children – It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.
yes, back in ’75 I was hospitalized. The kid in the bed next to me was there b/c his brother poked out his eye with a fork.
Like that ice guy. Nice to see you again. Oh and btw, we did have an eye incident in our family, but Thank G-d, the eye is still there. It is unlikely so I use the ever popular:
“I am completely not interested in a trip to the emergency room today? Are you? Huh? Last time, you were bleeding so much you didn’t even enjoy the sirens!”
During 3rd grade recess (don’t you miss that? not 3rd grade, but recess!) me and my friend were sword-fighting with sticks. I scratched him just under the eye. Parents say “you’ll poke your eye out” because eyes are soft membranes that can easily get popped by projectiles and other things.
“b/c his brother poked out his eye with a fork”
Is his brother a serial killer now?
i had my eye taped shut for three months when i was 7 or 8 due to a rock incident but it was far from being popped out.
‘Don’t do that you’ll break your neck’ was very popular in my house growing up, and while its possible in theory how many kids break their neck jumping on a bed?
For some reason I have these visions of eyes rolling down the sidewalk with screaming children clutching their eye sockets chasing them down the block.
And don’t forget the old standby of “your face will get stuck that way forever.”
Yes, sharp things can damage/pop eyeballs. So it may not “pop out” but it can.
It just sounds more dramatic that way, I guess.
I personally know someone who is blind in one eye because someone threw paperclip at him when he was 12 years old. Very sad. So yes, it can happen.
I have a scar on my eyebrow because my brother hit me in the face with a large plastic dreidle.
I can only recall hearing these sort of phrases on TV. My parents never told us anything like this. Instead when someone we knew died from being reckless we would just repeatedly hear those stories until the pictures were hammered into our heads. Oh and the Shrivelpator stories were and are quite popular in my family. Those will take care of any unruly children in an instant
Hesh, I have quite a few scars…for a girl. You see, I was raised in a family of 8 kids and two cousins. The boys waaaaay outnumbered us.
I have a small scar in my left eyebrow. That did not come from playing with sticks or running with scissors – I got attacked by a previously unnoticed palm tree that caught on the sweater my Nana made me put on (in 82 degree heat) to go across the way to get my sister in for lunch.
Me, coming back bleeding. My sister, pale at the sight of all the blood. My Nana grabbing her apron to get a ‘look’
After her initial diagnosis of “Not deadly” she pronounced, “Well, that will show you for running and not looking where you were going. You could have poked your eye out.”
My closest in age sister and I always said we would NEVER say anything even remotely close to “Put that stick down or you might poke someone’s eye out” etc.
But…we did. And do.
And I have even heard my daughter say it to her husband.
Sigh. It’s a curse upon Jewish mothers and their offspring. We must say, “Don’t run with scissors. You’re gonna poke your eye out.”
What’s it with the eye, anyway? What about falling on the scissors and stabbing yourself to death?