This really could be called The Art of the Deal, but The Donald, or as I like to call him, The Hair Piece, already used that title.  If you haven’t read Art of the Deal by Trump, let me summarize; put a big freaking T on everything you build and don’t pay your bills for the construction.  My buddies stone and tile business doesn’t even accept cash jobs from Trump anymore.

Anyway, Frank must have been studying the Donald because he’s pulled some shady stuff these past two weeks.

He’s been having an issue with his eye where it gets red on one side and he’s forced to close it to focus.  When we try to look at it he screams like we’re boiling his skin.  So I take him to see the doc.  We go back and he just sits there and lets her do everything short of poking his eye out.  No protests, no crying, no struggling.  She even put a fluorescent dye in there to highlight a possible scratch.  The cool part of that was his eye was orange all day.  Even when it teared up, he would have these orange trails down his face.  I may have her do that again when I take Frank to his first Tennessee basketball game this year.

The doc finds nothing but gives me an anti-biotic drop to put in both eyes twice a day.   She says “two drops, each eye, twice a day.”  Just like that.  She says it in a manner that makes me realize she has been fooled into thinking Frank is this cooperative and docile all the time.  She and the other doc are great, we love them and they really love Frank, but she clearly has no appreciation for the intensity and duration of the ensuing cage match battle royale required to get 2 drops in his eyes, not once but twice a day.

So we go home, Frank waves and gives his standard goodbye; a angelic “bye” so high an octave, most Vienna Boys Choir members would just quit or start drinking or both if they were asked to hit it.  After we get the prescription, it’s time.  Go time that is.

Frank sees me and Tracy coming toward him.  His Jedi sense tells him something is afoot and he starts to flee.  My cat like quickness has started to return.  Amazing what quitting diet coke and dropping 24 pounds will do for the reflexes.  Plus he got lazy and cut the corner too close to the ottoman and I snagged him.  Now it’s on.  Once I pin his arms and legs, he diverts all power to front deflector shields, by which I mean he is moving his head back and forth so fast to keep us from his eyes, he almost achieved time travel.  Not sure what concerns me more; the fact he felt such a weak move past the ottoman was enough to get by me or that he’s laughing the entire time Tracy is trying to pry his eyelids open.

Like a hockey ref waiting for the big guys to punch themselves tired before moving in, I wait.  Then as he slows to see what’s going on I engage the tractor beam – holding his head still.  Tracy swoops in for the drop.  On the Dr Seuss strength scale, his eyelids are at ten men times two.  She pries them open somehow and delivers two drops to each eye. Mission accomplished.  Until the next time.

Tracy tries a little rope a dope for the next event.  She hands him the bottle of visine, which gets the red out, and says, “you can put drops in my eyes and then I’ll do yours.” “Ok mommy!”  That is the surest sign he’s lying.  No thinking, no protesting, just agreement.  If they were in prison, the medic would be pulling a ivory soap shaped shiv out of Tracy’s abdomen.  You can guess what happens.  He gleefully puts the drops in Tracy’s eyes and then…, yep, he flees.  Laughing the entire time.

Well the eye gets no better and we take him to an eye doctor.  This will be a treat. Nothing but eye prying instruments in a eye doc’s office.  I pick him up from school early and decide to just level with him.  Going to the eye doctor Frank.  No daddy it’s your turn at the doctor.  Like a dope I say, no way bro, I’m not letting that dude stick stuff in my eye.  That was brilliant.  He sat quiet for the 12 minute trip to downtown Knoxville.  But once we got to the office he was right as rain.  He was his usual angelic self that he normally is in public.  When we went back the nurse and doc started prodding and poking, making him read eye charts, look this way and that.  He did everything they asked, no objection, no complaint.  Doc says, “Frank want daddy to sit with you in the chair while we put your head in this machine?”  “Nope.”  Ok then.  I’ll just sit here and stare at my cell phone like I have important stuff going on.

Then we get to the moment.  They need to look deeper into his eye so they want to dilate them. This means drops.  And they tell him they’re going to do it.  Suckers.  This should be good.

It was, for them.  He just sat there while they put the drops in his eyes.  He even kept his eyes open.  They didn’t have to touch him.  Little chooch.  His eyes get big a saucers and he is now like Roy Orbison, or Stevie Wonder for you young folk.  Sunglasses on, walking slowly around the waiting room until they call us back.  Should have video’d him.  But still when we went back he just did everything they said, smiled a few times even.  The staff couldn’t praise him enough.  Most cooperative, polite, patient they’ve ever had, they said.

We get steroid drops this time and the doc says “it should clear up in 2 to 3 days, give the drops for 10 and we won’t need to see him till he’s eight, which is…”  I say “five years.” “He’s only three?!”  Yeah, he’s only three. He can carry conversations, count to 20, up to 5 in Italian, and has since learned to add and subtract without using his fingers.  Most importantly he can hit a real golf ball with his midget driver about 12 yards in the air.

He counted the drops for the nurse as she put them in.  They were stunned.  I said don’t be.  He’s the devil incarnate.  This is how they do, lay in the tall weeds and then when the moment is right, strike the earth.  Trust me, he’s biding his time.  The anti-christ will run from this kid.  His ability with numbers is weird however.  Show him a letter and he thinks it’s a doughnut and tries to eat it, but numbers, kid’s a savant.

Anyway, we walk out with another bottle of drops.  Actually, another bottle full of midget wrestling.  I have no illusions what I just saw in the docs office will repeat when we get home.  I don’t even entertain a glimmer of hope.  I just start stealing myself for the battle. We get outside the office and Orbison wants his sunglasses. His eyes are still wide as a meth head’s.  He’s giggling and when I ask him why he says it’s because everything is fuzzy.  Sure thing I say, I notice the fuzziness has not hampered his ability to walk a straight line down the sidewalk.

He’s probably giggling because he’s figured out the escape angle between the ottoman and the coffee table.

Oh yeah, it’s on.