First remove the glow-stick from thine own eye

On Saturday Jake went to the birthday party of his friend Alex. They enjoyed playing paintball, had pizza and birthday cake, and spent the night playing Nintendo. Unfortunately for Jake, while all the other boys slept over at Alex's house he had to return home at 10:30 PM so he could attend church the next morning. When he arrived home late that night knowing all the other boys were still in the throes of Nintendonitis, his only consolation was the pink glow-stick that he received in his partybag. He cracked the glass vial, shook up the two fluids, and fell asleep staring at its soothing phosphorescent light.

As if reluctant to part with that birthday euphoria, Jake decided it would be a great idea to bring his (now spent) glow-stick to church with him. And so it was that as we were in the middle of fast and testimony meeting, Kaddi and I looked over to see that Jake had managed to crack the glow-stick outer casing and squirt its radiocative fluid onto his shirt, into his eyes, and onto the dress of the lady sitting in front of him. You really have to admire Jake and his unique talents. Who else can take a child's party favour and produce a mushroom cloud?

As we have since learned, the glass vials in glow-sticks are full of hydrogen peroxide. As anyone who wore contact lenses in the eighties can attest: it is extremely painful when applied directly to the eye. I took Jake to the bathroom to rinse, but he had his eyes shut too tightly to allow in any water. Luckily, the husband of the family who gives us a ride to church each week is a US army doctor, who instructed us to take the eye-flush concept to the next leve. We carried Jake into the kitchen and laid him on the counter. I held his head in the sink while Dr. Gibbons forced his eyes open underneath the kitchen tap. We held him under the water for a good fifteen minutes. His hair was soaked, his shirt was soaked, we even got his pants a little wet. By the time we finished he looked like a drowned rat...who'd been smoking marijuana.

As fate would have it, immediately next door to the Asoke church building is the Rutnin hospital, an eye clinic that caters to clientelle from all over the world. I walked Jake over there and registered to see eye doctor. Within fifteen minutes he'd had an general eye exam. Within thirty minutes he was in the doctor's office getting an eye scan. The doctor determined there had been no damage to the eye tissue. Within 45 minutes we'd received his eye drops and paid the bill: twenty-seven dollars. Within an hour we were back at church in time for the beginning of third-hour classes. (Why must the Thai private health care system be so blasted efficient?!!)

Lest ye find yourself feeling too sorry for poor Jakey - know this. While we rinsed out his eyes, the primary president brought him several fun-sized Twix and a large handful of Starbust candies (which you can't buy here) to help alleviate his suffering. He sat eating this candy at the eye clinic while he watched 'Mr. Bean take a vacation' and several pretty Thai nurses fawned all over him, enamoured of his red hair. At one point I considered dumping the remainder of the glowstick into my own eyes to get in on the action.

On the walk back to our meetings I asked Jake which scenario he preferred:

Column A : Severe eye pain, followed by candy, a movie, and an hour long break from the Sunday block.

- OR -

Column B: A normal Sunday.

He chose column A. (A church-goin' man after my own heart.)