The school psychologist sat quietly across from me, the cow’s eyeball on the desk between us. It wasn’t the first time I had been sent to her office. There was the time when I had caused my teacher a significant amount of discomfort by describing in vivid detail my future death, which I had predicted would result from a particularly bloody and horrific act of aggression. The time before that, I had enthusiastically led a group of my classmates in a game I’d invented wherein we were all imaginary chain saw–wielding maniacs hell-bent on carving one another into pieces. When I brought the cow’s eyeball into school, my teacher didn’t even ask where I’d gotten it before she sent me to the psychologist. Had she asked, I probably would have denied the truth: that I’d stolen it from a classroom in the local community college, the halls of which I was roaming because my parents had enrolled me in a Saturday morning art class in the same facility. After all, I was no idiot; stealing was a punishable offense.
It was sitting on a shelf in a science lab. A jar of murky preservative liquid with this odd fleshy beige thing floating inside. At the time, I didn’t know it was an eyeball—there was nothing about its appearance that I could immediately identify as eyeball-esque. But I knew it was a biological something-or-other, clearly a piece of something once alive. There were about twenty, twenty-five of them, all lined up in a row. I was only seven, but I knew I could get away with taking one. Honestly, I didn’t feel a moment of guilt—I just swiped one of the jars, stuffed it into my backpack, and that was that.
When my father picked me up at the end of my art class, I pulled the jar out.
“What is this?” I asked him.
My dad took a look.
“That’s an eyeball,” he said.
My father just so happened to be a retinal surgeon. If he knew anything, he knew eyeballs.
“From a person?” I asked, a sense of morbid excitement swelling.
“Sweetheart, no. Look how big it is. You think that would fit in your eye socket?” he said.
I laughed.
“Maybe a cow, or a sheep,” he said. “There aren’t many sheep in town, so probably a cow.”
“Still pretty cool,” I said.
“It’s very cool,” he said. “Where did you get it?”
“They gave it to me,” I lied.
My father didn’t seem to think anything about that was suspicious. “We can dissect it later if you want,” he offered.
I was so proud of my cow’s eyeball in a jar. I was very excited to dissect it with my father, but I wanted to show it off a bit before I took it apart. This was a real treasure; my dad thought it was cool, I thought it was cool, my mother and my sister and my brothers thought it was cool. Not for one second did I consider that my teacher wouldn’t respond similarly when I shoved the jar in front of her face, liquid sloshing all around. Instead, her face contorted into an expression of horror.
WHEN MY FATHER PICKED ME UP AT THE END OF MY ART CLASS, I PULLED THE JAR OUT. "WHAT IS THIS?" I ASKED HIM. MY DAD TOOK A LOOK. "THAT'S AN EYEBALL," HE SAID.
I BECAME CONVINCED THAT THE AUTHORITY I WAS BUTTING UP AGAINST MUST HAVE GLEANED THAT I'D STOLEN MY TREASURE. THIEVERY WAS MY ONLY CRIME.
“It’s not a human eyeball. It’s just a cow’s eyeball. Or a sheep’s, but probably a cow’s eyeball.”
She didn’t respond to my explanation. Due to my previous visits to the school psychologist, during which I learned that little girls who fantasize about death and violence were odd, I assumed my teacher was displeased because she was under the impression that I’d come to be in possession of this eyeball through violent means.
“No, no,” I assured her. “Someone else gouged it out, not me. Actually, someone cut out a whole bunch of cows’ eyeballs. There’s a whole lot more where this came from.”
And then I was in the psychologist’s office with my eyeball. After several attempts at explaining my superexciting plans to carve up the eyeball with my father later, I stopped trying. Instead, I sat in defeated silence, waiting for my mother to come pick me up. I was in big trouble; there had to be a reason for that. I became convinced that the authority I was butting up against must have gleaned that I’d stolen my treasure. Thievery was my only crime. When my mother arrived, the psychologist told her that in all her years of practice, she’d never had a student sent to her for terrorizing her teacher with a preserved eyeball. My mother laughed.
“This is not a joke,” she told my mother, and continued to explain that it was very unusual for seven-year-old girls to be so thoroughly invested in gruesome fantasy.
“See, now, I wouldn’t call it that,” my mother said.
“What would you call it?”
“Biology,” she said.
And with that, we left. Me and my awesome mom. And my eyeball in a jar, soon to be dissected during a fun and educational afternoon with my awesome dad.