Journal Entry- You'll shoot your eye out.

Hey Guys,

I was thinking that you might like to hear some of the experiences of my life from time to time along with the boring lecture type stuff.

Growing up in Randolph Utah there were certain things young guys were just expected to have and do. We moved to Randolph from SLC when I was around 7 and soon learned I was in a whole new world.

One of the things all the guys had was a BB gun and I was simply dying to have one of my own. I remember clearly the look on my mothers face when I told her about the gun I wanted and the dread I felt as she told me her answer without saying a word. She then went on to explain all of the really good reasons why a kid my age shouldn't have one. Of course this did little to sway my desires and I persisted for what must have been an unbearable amount of time over the next few months.

I don't know exactly what changed her mind but I know at the time my dad was not as opposed she was. I imagine I wore her down and between dad and my moms constant desire to make us happy finally won out and I received my gun that Christmas.

The rest of the Winter was spent dialing in my aim in the back yard shooting targets for hours on end. An interesting side note to that first Winter was how tight money was. I got very good at setting my targets up in a way that would allow me to gather the BB's up after and reuse them.

After a long cold winter of target practice the time finally came to go shooting at some pot guts (rodents) with my friends. We loaded up in the back of my friends parents old pickup truck and about 10 minutes later we were dropped off in a field to begin our hunt.

I still remember the excitement I felt as we hiked up into the field and the determination I felt to show off my newly developed skills to my friends. As we passed through the gates to the field we noticed some large sprinkler pipes used to water the farmers fields. Knowing this would be a good hiding place for our intended targets.

In hind sight the next move was pretty stupid and put a big exclamation point on why kids shouldn't have guns especially without supervision. As I walked to one end of the 20 foot pipe my friend went to the other. We both looked through our ends of the pipe and sure enough there was what we were looking for. I told my friend to step aside because this one was mine. He did so and I took my first and only shot at a live animal. I predictably missed and stepped back to reload, during my slow reloading process my friend grew tired of waiting and decided to take a shot of his own.

As it seems to happen in life he chose to fire his shot right as I stuck my eye up to the pipe to prepare for my next shot. Unfortunately for me my buddy loaded his gun with a pellet rather than the traditional BB. A pellet is shaped in a cone so that it capture all the air from the rifle. In addition pellets are heavier so this combination creates a projectile that travels much further with a higher velocity than a regular BB.

The next few moments went by very fast and it took me some time to realize what happened. I remember looking through the pipe, seeing a flash and feeling a lot of pain. My first thought was that I had just got my eye shot out and fear shot through me like I had never experienced before.

My friends ran over knowing I had been hurt by the what I am going to say manly scream I let out. So there we stood a bunch of kids 7 and 8 years old in a field trying to figure out what in the world we were going to do. There was a lot of blood running from my eye area and after probably 10 minutes I still didn't dare actually open my eye. It was during this really confused scene that I turned my head to look towards town and had the most painful and strange experience. As I looked towards town a strong wind picked up and I felt like I had been stabbed by a needle straight through my brain. I also heard a sound like blowing into an empty bottle but much quieter.

When I finally got the guts up to open my eye I was overwhelmed by relief that I could still see out of it. The pellet had hit me about a quarter of an inch above my left eye and had actually created a hole in my skull. We all laughed with relief and spent another hour or so shooting our guns and and retelling the story.

As the time came to get picked up we realized that we were going to have to tell our parents what had happened and our time as hunters would be brought to an end. It was at this very desperate moment that I had a strike of genius and formulated the plan that would save our necks and more importantly our beloved guns.

This is one of the only times I have lied to my mom and this experience taught me how dangerous dishonesty can be. My brilliant plan was to tell our parents that I had stumbled while walking and as I fell I hit my eye on the site of the gun. This would explain the cut, the blood and actually cover any bruising that would occur.

As I expected my plan went off without a hitch and we skated out of troubles way without even a lecture. I even got a little extra attention that night which in a family the size of mine was not easy to come buy. I went to bed thinking of how smart I was and how smoothly I had averted trouble.

The next couple of days went buy without event and we began to feel like we were in the clear. Again, life has a way of catching up to you when you aren't doing the right things and the situation changed in a quick and very dangerous manner.

You see we had assumed that the flash I saw immediately after I was hit was the pellet flying out bouncing off my thick skull. If that were the case the plan I laid out would have went off without a hitch. The problem was that the pellet had actually buried itself deep into my skull and lodged there. This would be problematic on its own but it became further complicated by the fact that the pellet was made of lead and started causing major swelling and irritation in and around my left eye. I can remember hoping with all I had that the swelling would just go away but after a few days knew I had to come clean and tell my mom what had happened before it got any worse.

I can remember how scared, embarrassed and ashamed I felt telling the story as it had actually happened. I felt terrible for lying to her and didn't know how she was going to react, I was sure that it wasn't going to be good regardless.

this is one of the many times my mom surprised me as she snapped into action and rushed me two hours to SLC to the hospital. There was no screaming and yelling or long talks of disappointment just action and determination to make sure I was okay.

I was taken to Primary Childrens where they took an X-ray that clearly showed the pellet lodged in my skull. At this point we found out just how lucky I was because any number of factors would have caused the damage to be much worse and even fatal. The pellet had stopped about a millimeter before punching all the way through and lodging into my brain. This meant that if the pipe would have been just a few feet shorter I would have been in serious trouble. If the shot would have been a quarter of an inch lower I would have certainly lost my eye and half inch higher would have lined it up with a thinner part of my skull where it certainly would have penetrated in to my brain as well.

the procedure was fairly simple to get the pellet out and the physical wounds healed quickly. The things that stick with me to this day are the emotional wounds caused by the dishonesty to someone who loved me so much and the stupidity of putting myself in serious danger by not listening to someone who knew more about life than I did. On top of that I took an even greater risk by not telling exactly what happened causing the situation to get much worse.

Ultimately I had to face the music and listen to my mom explain how scared she was and how disappointed she was in how I handled the situation. Nothing has ever impacted me like disappointing someone I love especially people like my mom and now my wife who are amazingly good and loving women. Of course I lost my gun from this situation and managed to prove myself responsible enough to earn it back a few years later. I never again shot a gun around others and the situation killed any desire I had to hunt for good.

The lessons I learned from this experience still serve me today. I learned that little white lies as they are called can actually turn into life threatening situations. I learned to listen more to people who have more experience than I do because it can save you a lot of pain. And most importantly I learned that a mothers love overlooks so much and is one of the most precious gifts in the world.

Love,

Dad