“I know about someone who had no retina.”

The boy stopped what he was doing and looked at the girl, exclaiming, “Sounds gross! Was it bloody?”

“It just wasn’t there, you dolt.” She looked directly down at him.

Shocked, the boy gave her a blank, baleful stare: Since when was the babysitter allowed to call ‘the baby’ a dolt? He’d never read anything about it.

She explained: “The retina is the back wall of your eyeball. It makes everything we see right-side-up. So—all her life she thought frowns were smiles and smiles were frowns. She also walked in the air—“

“Wait—Nuh-uh!”

“Sure, she did—It’s what she saw, wasn’t it? To her, the sky was like our cement sidewalks—standard stomping ground—stars, black holes and galaxies. Although, her center was the same as our center—that part’s the same. What she saw was the raw footage of life—our vision before it’s flipped over by the back of the retina and the brain. So, really, she got what we’re maybe supposed to get.

“It sure was expensive for her, though. Furniture was tacked to the ceiling exactly above the furniture they were identical to—so she knew where to go to furniture. Though, the fans weren’t on the floor, though she hopped ‘over’ them, thinking they were on the floor instead of the ceiling.”

While slinking to the dusty-green floor from the armchair of the couch, the boy pouted, “You really know how to ruin hanging from the ceiling—How should I know it’s what we’re supposed to do, if we didn’t have retinas screwing us up?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, ruefully, and with a grin in her eyes. “Maybe I should have waited before telling you how mediocre being a daredevil is. If one part of life—the little retina!--were ever gone from us, you’d be a real boring guy to the crowds.”
The boy shifted uncomfortably. He quietly asked, “So, what happened to her?”

“One day, she drove by a remote town in Canada—so remote that it didn’t have any cars. She was on her way to see the Northern Lights—to see the gorgeous colors rain down on her—awesome, right?

“Anyway, the village was unknown to the world. She stopped and asked for directions from a teenager on the road. When he introduced himself, she swept down to where she saw his face, saying what a handsome, nice young man he was.

“Well, in his perspective, she was admiring his crotch. And that called a lot of negative attention on her—so much that she went to court.

“In the courtroom, bumping around and eyes swollen with tears, she shouted, ‘I can’t help it! I have no retina! I’m sorry!’

“The crowd in the courtroom began to murmur; what’s a retina? Does this mean we have one?

“Everyone frowned gravely, and the woman was encouraged—and almost gleeful. She felt she had accomplished actual communication between her and the townspeople. She cried at the top of her lungs, ‘I HAVE NO RETINAS! This was what made me look at the young man’s privates-gonadols—pelvic baggage—you-know-whats . . .’

“In some kind of trance, the woman listed a different word after another, and started to offend some of the pure and simple townspeople. Scared by her hysterics, the crowd wondered: that is what made her do such an uncouth thing? It sounds like the Devil’s work.

“So they shot her.”