The Gunshot Of A Lifetime
Pulling the trigger on a shotgun and its repercussions for life
America is infested with guns. Handguns, whether legal or illegal, litter the urban landscape like lethal cockroaches. Shotguns and rifles mounted in rural and suburban homes keep homeowners safe and deer, elk, bear and turkey hunters satisfied.
As a young boy growing up in middle America - South Dakota, Missouri and Texas - shotguns were a common sight hung up in homes and truck cabins. Gun racks and fishing poles were just part of the natural decor. My dad hunted pheasant, but none of my four siblings or I ever got the hunting bug. We did fish though.
Today gun control debates dominate the cultural divide between red and blue states. Even though overall gun ownership has declined since the late 1970s, there are still more firearms than people in America (Congressional Research Service: 393 million guns to 326 million population). Foreigners are often gobsmacked at our gun culture and the utter insanity of arming so many citizens with lethal weaponry.
The politics make this matter a complete mess. However, life influences usually determine where you stand on the issue. For me, that decision was made at age 11.
As a fifth-grader in the late 1960s in Texas, it was common to sleepover at a friend’s house during the long, hot summer months. We often slept on the porch outside or pitched a tent in the backyard as an alternative to sleeping in the house with box fans blasting warm air from the windows.
Jimmy Brown was a schoolmate who lived several blocks away in the next neighborhood. On one evening I spent the night as his grandma watched over us. His parents usually worked late running their hamburger stand business. Jimmy and I messed around playing games, eating snacks and watching TV.
While Grandma stayed in the living room, we hung out in the master bedroom, where a large console TV was parked in the corner. A few blankets were laid out on the floor for us to sleep on, as we were already dressed in our pajamas. We sat in front of the TV on the thick, brown shag carpet chatting the night away.
Later in the evening, Jimmy, an excitable kid, started crawling around the bed and dragged out a long leather case from underneath. He wanted me to see his daddy’s gun, a very cool thing for two boys to look at. He sat on the foot end of the bed and opened the case in his lap. I jumped up and sat next to him on the bed.
I never handled real guns in my house, but every kid in my generation played “Army” or “Cowboys and Indians” with plastic pistols and rifles. So it did not seem out of place to pull out a gun and pick it up. Jimmy held the gunstock towards his chest and pointed the barrel downward while explaining about the shells, safety switch and other parts of the weapon.
Then he asked me to hold it and put the gun in my hands. It felt heavy. I sat on the bed and put my right index finger on the trigger. It felt natural. The weight of the barrel kept it slanting down towards the floor. Jimmy stood up and sat near the TV to grab some potato chips left in a bowl and his soft drink. I was still on the bed playing with the shotgun.
When Jimmy suddenly sprang up, I pulled the trigger, heard a loud sound - KABOOM! - and froze. Then I started to cry and dropped the shotgun at my feet. Grandma came running into the bedroom yelling to us about the TV: Did the TV tube blow out? I was in a state of shock and scared shitless. I kept crying as Grandma and Jimmy tried to settle me down.
I was not hurt physically. I don’t even remember if the shotgun recoiled. When I opened my wet eyes, I saw the damage. I killed a section of the shag carpet. A large hole, about a foot in diameter, was a tangled mess of fuzzy brown material. Busted pieces of potato chips surrounded the crime scene in front of the TV where Jimmy sat just minutes before.
I was unconsolable. I just wanted to lie down, go to sleep and forget about everything. I was terrified of being punished by Jimmy’s parents and my Mom. With the bedroom lights in full glare, I laid down on the blankets, closed my eyes tight and faked falling asleep.
Hours later I heard a bit of commotion. Jimmy’s parents came home from a hard day’s work to the news of a shotgun blast in their bedroom. There was no yelling, no stern lectures and no one bothered me. I fell asleep.
In the morning, Jimmy’s parents reassured me that they would not tell my Mom and that nothing was my fault. They kept their word.
From that day forward, guns have made me uncomfortable. I do not like to carry shotguns or even grip a pistol in my hand. If I have to hold a weapon, I hold it like a dirty diaper with just two fingers squeezing one end. That is the debilitating power of a single moment.
Despite my gun-shyness, I am not anti-gun. I am all for sensible gun control, safety training and education and ridding of the excesses of America’s gun culture - mainly semi-automatic rifles, extended magazines and registration loopholes. In some states, open carry laws now make it legal to strap a firearm on your belt while shopping at Walmart. The guns do not worry me; the lack of discipline of the carrier does.
Since the fifth-grade, I’ve had a couple more trials with guns. In college, I went out with my housemates during dove hunting season. On a private land lease, I watched my buddies scamper around clumps of oak and pine trees to shoot at these medium-sized birds of questionable taste.
In an attempt to overcome my past trauma, I agreed to take a shot or two. A single grey dove was perched on a horizontal branch about 50 feet high and 30 feet away. I aimed, pulled the trigger twice and blasted the bark off a pine tree. The bird flew away safe. The tree would be okay too (I was studying forestry). I was not feeling my inner hunter. I never tried to hunt again.
After elementary school, I moved to Missouri and did not keep up much with Jimmy. It was only years later during high school that I came back to Texas. Jimmy’s parents were still in the hamburger stand business, only this time as divorced parties with two locations.
As a divorced parent, my Mom worked at the local State Hospital in the food service division. Later on, she took classes at the local university to earn a certificate to be a nutritionist. During her long tenure at the hospital, Jimmy ended up working there for a few years at the same time.
Sadly, my Mom died of cancer in 1995.
Jimmy attended the funeral and came by our old house to pay his respects to me personally. I was now out of college, married and living in Malaysia. It is always special to see someone from your childhood after decades of living far apart. You always remember them from the early days only because those memories are the strongest.
I knew Jimmy and my Mom overlapped working at the hospital, but he told me something on that sad day that I never knew. He told my Mom about shooting the shag carpet back in 1968 during the sleepover.
For over 22 years, that scary shooting was a secret. Of course, Jimmy’s parents kept it all hush-hush to keep the police and child protective services unawares. Jimmy also had good reason to stay silent to save his parents from getting into trouble.
But how could Mom not let me know that she knew the story? I think it all comes down to gratitude. That summer stay over could have ended in tragedy. In retrospect, everyone knew how close we were to losing a life. Silence helped us all to cope.
After our revealing conversation, Jimmy walked out into the front yard, turned his head back and grinned ear to ear. He was happy to know that all the secrets were out, and I was happy just to see him smile.
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- Rick Scobi (@rickscobi)