Near Death Experiences, Part 4 (By Firing Squad)
And Now! The moment you've all been waiting for! [drumroll] In my head, I sound like P.T. Barnum. Do I sound like that to you?Near Death, By Firing Squad.
This is going to be so anti-climactic, it's not even funny, but I'll continue…
The place: Knoxville, Tennessee (place is important because the only anti-gun law worth noting in TN is the prohibition of gun sales to kids; anything else goes)
The time: About 1969, approximately 7 years old.
The firing squad: One 5 year old gunman, named Eric (but we'll call him Peter to protect his privacy), in possession of an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle!
Parental supervision: None.
The execution:
Me: "What have you got?"
Peter: "An Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle!"
Me: "I'll bet you can't hit anything with it."
Peter: "Bet I can!"
Me: "Prove it!"
Peter: "Okay. You stand on the other side of the yard and I'll shoot you."
Me: "You can't hit me."
Peter: "Oh, yeah?"
Me: "Just try it!" I stood perfectly still about 50 feet across the yard, fully expecting the bullet to ricochet off of his house and into the nearby ravine.
Peter: Ready. Aim. FIRE!
Me: "OUCH! That hurt!" I looked down to see a small hole torn in the shoulder of my shirt and checked for blood (there was none). I ran home to Mom and told her that I'd just been shot! Mom asked a few questions and then said, "Just be glad he didn't shoot your eye out." Sheesh, no sympathy. :-{
In reality, I should just be glad the gun didn't look more like this.
Postscript:
I just looked up the Wiki definition of "Near-Death Experience."
"The phenomenology (which means, a current in philosophy that takes the intuitive experience of phenomena, what presents itself to us in conscious experience, as its starting point and tries to extract from it the essential features of experiences and the essence of what we experience) of a near-death experience usually includes physiological, psychological and transcendental factors such as subjective impressions of being outside the physical body (an out-of-body experience), transcendence of ego and spatiotemporal boundaries, and other transcendental experiences."
Okay, that is not what I've been talking about in this here blog. I hope no one was misled.
Labels: Near-Death Experiences
posted by Gwynne @ 1:09 AM
10 Comments:
When you get a minute, could you post an English translation of that near death experiences definition.
Thanks.
Seven years old, huh? I didn't know everything and think myself indestructible until I was 10 or 11 at the earliest. I guess girls do mature faster than boys.
Ok, see, here's the thing. Cute story, but you'd've gotten huge bonus points if you had managed to include:
1) something Fragile - you know, from France
2) Dreams of teachers throwing A's around a classroom
3) Freezing your tongue to a flagpole
and
4) A bunny suit
Ah well. :) I'm still happy you survived your childhood!
I shot a beebee gun at a target on a wood fence when I was young and it ricocheted (sp?) right back up my sleeve! Could a shot an eye out is right, yikes. lol, lgp
We had something like that at my house (son and daughter) only it was a paintball gun.
When I was a kid it was my brother and cousin (bb gun - bb lodged in my brother's hand in the web between his thumb and index finger)
You know the "mother's curse" (someday you'll have a son just like you and that'll fix you). My brother laughs and says that in his case it almost worked. Then he points at me and says "she got a son just like me!"
;-)
Jim, I think you need some healing crystals, or something, to understand all that. And that falls into the category of "things I know nothing about." As for the age of maturity, I think there's something to that. ;-)
Beth, I was already worried about copyright infringement. In reality, it was just a BB gun, but I wanted you to get the full effect. And really, where was there room for a Major Award in that story? ;-)
Lyndon, right up your sleeve?! Really. LOL :-)
Ellen, there's so much truth to that mother's curse. I have two teenaged step-daughters who have paid me back several times over for the things I put my mother through. ;-)
(in the purely boundary-less spaciotemporal sense, of course).
Of course. :-)
...we had to make our weapons out of clothes pins and rubber bands.
Same here. Our weapon of choice was rocks. Big rocks. ;-)
Eric,
You would've shot your eye out anyway.
The closest my brother and I ever got to a gun that actually discharged something was a fly squat gun which shot out a fly squatter on a string! We had plastic guns though (or rather he did).
Jim's right. 8-)
And Rachel, when I was a kid, they hadn't even invented fly squat guns yet, maybe not even plastic guns. ;-)
Yeah, well, when I was a kid we'd moved past those low tech squatter things and had fly zappers. And, and...
Actually, we still had a swatter (which I'm thinking might be the pedestrian version of a squatter.) (Squatter is much cooler sounding tho.)
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