Down to the Dirt

So, last night... just five literal minutes after I posted a blog, I got a phone call from my mom.  Already this was unusual, as it was 9:56 PM, and my fourth-grade-teacher-mother is usually snug as a bug in a rug by that time.  I knew we were in for an adventure when her first words were, "I need your advice."
When my mother says words like "I need your advice" or "I'm not sure what to do," they are almost always followed by some outlandish predicament my mother has found herself in and is, in turn, calling me to get her out of.  It could be anything from not being able to make the television remote work to water pouring out of the hot water heater and flooding the kitchen floor.  (The remote I can usually handle; what does she think I can do about the cascade of water?  Seriously, call a plumber.)
Last night was no exception.
The next words after "I need your advice" were legendary.  They went something like this:  "I think I have a tick in my eye."  Not like a nervous twitch or a muscle spasm, mind you, an actual insect.
The first thing I did was ask if she was sure it was a tick.  (Remember this; it will be important later.)  She said she was certain it was, and that she had tried to pull it off with her finger and a pair of tweezer, and it wouldn't budge.
Wonderful.  It's 10:00 at night, and my mother has a disease-carrying bug in her eye.
So, we debated what she should do.  Go to sleep?  Call her eye doctor?  Go the emergency room?  She was determined she needed to go to the emergency room, and that I needed to drive home and meet her there.  I don't live but about 30 minutes from my hometown, so I really didn't mind going to meet her, but I really wanted her to call her eye doctor and see what he said instead of rushing down to the local circus known as the ER.  
We decided she would call her eye doctor and call me back.
I went ahead and changed out of my pajamas, for I felt it inevitable that I would be making a hometown journey.  Within minutes she called me back and said that she was going to her eye doctor's office to meet him (oh, the charms of small-town living) and that she wanted me to meet her there.  In actuality she had me, her eye doctor, and her best friend all headed into town to meet her to remove the alleged tic.  What a diva.
So, I'm on my way to Columbus to meet my mom and see the tic in person.  Or so I thought.  I don't even make it to the airport exit before she calls me and tells me to turn around, for the whole fiasco is over.  Done.  Finished.  
The tic has been removed, and the doctor has sent her on her way.  
Oh, wait.  It wasn't even a tic.  It was a piece of dirt.
That's right... a piece. of. dirt.
Therefore all the questions I didn't ask in the first place (like, Did you not feel something crawl into your eye? or, How come it just showed up there out of nowhere?) because they appeared invalid all became glaringly... valid.
In the meantime, her friend is waiting at our house, confused as she can be because she thought she was supposed to come to the house and pick up my mom to take her to the doctor's office.
In essence, my mother had everyone driving around creation in the middle of the night, moving heaven and earth to salvage her eye from lyme disease... when all that was really there was a harmless piece of topsoil.
How undeniably typical.