Eyeball

Last night I thought I was going to be making rainbows out of colored water, and I find myself wearing latex gloves, holding a sharp object and only breathing through my mouth to avoid the smell.

Have you ever seen an eyeball just laying on a tray? I had not. Didn't really want to either. But we went to the science display at my daughter's school and one of the activities involved eyeballs. Not just any eyeball. A cow's eyeball. Did you ever notice that cow's are kinda large, with big heads and enormous eyeballs? The task at hand was to dissect the eyeball.

Luckily, I was only an assistant, here to watch my child slice up a pupil. The eyeball filled her entire hand, as if it were a raquetball. It was squishy and wet, but she jabbed the scissors in and began to cut all the way around the cornea. She peeled the cornea off and squeezed the eyeball like a wet sponge. The lens popped out and was described by the instructor to be just like a coughdrop..."but don't taste it" he says. As if. Meanwhile, her sister is huddled in the corner refusing to touch, or help.

The next step, she turned the eyeball inside out to expel the vitreous humor which is the gel that fills the eyeball. There was a lot more to see and learn, but I was trying to keep my cookies in while consoling her sister that she should at least "try to touch it".....

In the end, she was proud of herself and amazed at what she found inside the cow's eye. She could not wait to tell all her friends about what she did. She took off her gloves and told her sister how awesome it was and said, "you are such a girl...."

**the 7 year old dissected the cow eye, while the 11 year old middle school student shrieked and gagged in the corner**