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Tuesday - Playing with Firearms
Oct. 25th, 2005 10:15 amOn the drive into work this morning, I was thinking about crossroads. I was thinking of those small decisions that we make that have a big impact on ourselves and those around us.
Once, many years ago when I was much, much younger, I was looking for a pencil in a desk drawer. I came across a white cloth in the back of the drawer, wrapped around something small and hard. The whole bundle was about the size of my fist. For the record, I have very small hands.
I unwound the fabric and found inside a derringer, a tiny pistol that fit in the palm of my hand. I could tell that it was very old, but it was shiny and well kept, with a mother of pearl handle. It looked like a toy to me. Playing with it, I cocked back the trigger. I could not figure out how to un-cock it, except by pulling the trigger. I figured that a gun this old, left like this, would be unloaded. I pointed it around the apartment and even at my own head, getting a small thrill at the idea of pulling the trigger just to hear it click.
But I was raised by wise parents. I had been told over and over growing up that there is no such thing as an unloaded gun, that you never point a gun at anyone you don't want to kill. So, just to be sure, I opened the front door and took aim at the sky. I pulled the trigger.
The derringer was loaded.
There gun went off.
I remember how my hands shook as I re-wrapped the derringer in the cloth and hid it back in the drawer where I found it. I went back to bed and pulled the cover over my head and lay there trembling for the two hours.
The person who would have found me is the man who is now my husband. He would not have known that it was just an accident by a stupid and child-like college girl he had recently begun a relationship with.
I wrote a poem about it, and he came across it a few weeks later, though it was not one I ever meant to show him.
I was standing on my father's front porch with him shortly after that. "I would have thought it was suicide, I wouldn't have known," he told me when he dropped the empty shell casing into my palm. His face was gray and very grim. I looked at the shell and began to tremble all over again. I dropped it into the soil of the flower bed next to the sidewalk and used my big toe to bury it, then I buried my face into his chest. We never brought the incident up between us again.
There are times when I think about that day, and marvel about it. I wonder what my father would think if he knew that buried in the flower bed a few feet from my his front door, there still lies the shell of a bullet that almost killed his only daughter.
I made a decision on an Autumn day, not unlike today, and it seemed silly and small the moment I made it. A few seconds later, I realized that it might have been the most important and critical decision I would ever make.
Crossroads are funny things. Some decisions you forget about and never realize the impact. Others, you can't forget, no matter how many years go by.
Once, many years ago when I was much, much younger, I was looking for a pencil in a desk drawer. I came across a white cloth in the back of the drawer, wrapped around something small and hard. The whole bundle was about the size of my fist. For the record, I have very small hands.
I unwound the fabric and found inside a derringer, a tiny pistol that fit in the palm of my hand. I could tell that it was very old, but it was shiny and well kept, with a mother of pearl handle. It looked like a toy to me. Playing with it, I cocked back the trigger. I could not figure out how to un-cock it, except by pulling the trigger. I figured that a gun this old, left like this, would be unloaded. I pointed it around the apartment and even at my own head, getting a small thrill at the idea of pulling the trigger just to hear it click.
But I was raised by wise parents. I had been told over and over growing up that there is no such thing as an unloaded gun, that you never point a gun at anyone you don't want to kill. So, just to be sure, I opened the front door and took aim at the sky. I pulled the trigger.
The derringer was loaded.
There gun went off.
I remember how my hands shook as I re-wrapped the derringer in the cloth and hid it back in the drawer where I found it. I went back to bed and pulled the cover over my head and lay there trembling for the two hours.
The person who would have found me is the man who is now my husband. He would not have known that it was just an accident by a stupid and child-like college girl he had recently begun a relationship with.
I wrote a poem about it, and he came across it a few weeks later, though it was not one I ever meant to show him.
I was standing on my father's front porch with him shortly after that. "I would have thought it was suicide, I wouldn't have known," he told me when he dropped the empty shell casing into my palm. His face was gray and very grim. I looked at the shell and began to tremble all over again. I dropped it into the soil of the flower bed next to the sidewalk and used my big toe to bury it, then I buried my face into his chest. We never brought the incident up between us again.
There are times when I think about that day, and marvel about it. I wonder what my father would think if he knew that buried in the flower bed a few feet from my his front door, there still lies the shell of a bullet that almost killed his only daughter.
I made a decision on an Autumn day, not unlike today, and it seemed silly and small the moment I made it. A few seconds later, I realized that it might have been the most important and critical decision I would ever make.
Crossroads are funny things. Some decisions you forget about and never realize the impact. Others, you can't forget, no matter how many years go by.
