I bet you never thought I had a childhood…

This is one of those experiences that made me understand some of the harsh realities of life and partly why I am such a big proponent of personal responsibility and thoughtful decision making. I think about this story every time I question something I am about to do.

When I was eight years old I had a slingshot and a friend named Mike. The slingshot was not named Mike, my friend was. It was a poorly worded sentence and I’m too lazy to go back and fix it, but not too lazy to write a longer sentence explaining it. What does that say about me? Anyway, Mike and I used to try to shoot stuff with the slingshot. Birds, squirrels, lizards, all were potential victims of the wrist rocket. Anyone who has ever shot a rock out of a slingshot knows that the odds of hitting what you are aiming at are about the same as being struck by lightning and a falling satellite at the same time. In essence, those woodland creatures were never safer than when they were in the crosshairs of my slingshot.

One summer day we were looking for another animal to mildly startle when I saw a squirrel across the street. We were at the front of my house, so there was an entire front yard and a street between me and the target, or about 50 yards. In fifty yards a rock fired from a slingshot can get off course by about four miles. I figured if the squirrel could even hear the rock hit from where he was it would count as an awesome shot, so I drew back…inhaled…timed the heartbeat…exhaled…and released…

The rock left the leather pouch in the typically random (Oxymoron, tables for one please.) trajectory; going up, corkscrewing, and settling into a gentle curve to the right. Then I saw him: the kid on the bike, riding out from behind the trees on the right side of my yard. I even recognized him as a kid named Brian who was on my soccer team the season before.

And damned if that rock wasn’t blazing right for his melon.

I saw his head jerk forward, and he probably fell off his bike, but by now Mike and I were hauling ass. We both knew we’d get killed if our parents found out that we had aimed the slingshot at someone. Sure, the fact that it hit the kid would make it obvious to any physicist that we had not been aiming for him, but both of our parents had told us that they’d slaughter us and use our intestines as jump ropes if they even thought they heard someone say that we were aiming that thing at a person. We hid behind the neighbor’s house and hatched an ingenious plan to keep our stupid asses alive. It was as follows:

1.) ditch the weapon in the neighbor’s doghouse
2.) go home and shut the hell up until it blows over

Yeah. We weren’t very good at ingenious plans. It’s probably why our international crime syndicate never got past the initial development phases.

The next few hours were my first (and only) memory of being wracked by guilt to the point of physical illness. I went to soccer practice and couldn’t play. I came home and Mike told me that the kid’s dad had come over to his house looking for “the little bastard with the slingshot” (a.k.a. me). Now not only was my conscience eating my soul to pieces, I knew that the kid’s dad was third in line to kill me, right after my mom and dad.

I sat down to dinner and wanted to die. I couldn’t eat. I sat on the floor and half-heartedly played with my dog for a minute, but mom knew something was up. Because she’s a mom and they know stuff. I finally said I had to tell her something, and we went to the living room where I shakily told her what I did. I was sure she was going to yell at me and tell me to wait in my room until dad got home, but what she did was much worse.

She cried.

Not on purpose or anything, probably just because her son was all in a heap about things already, but oh jeez, when I looked up and saw her wipe away a tear… damn. Knowing I had disappointed my mom and made her cry simply destroyed me. My mom loved me enough to make me dinner and take me to soccer practice, all the while unaware that I was a cold, worthless criminal. I wanted to eat my own guts. Fortunately, I still wasn’t hungry.

She asked me what I thought I should do, and I said I wanted to go to his house and tell him I was sorry and it was an accident. I don’t know what I was expecting when we got to his house. I just remember standing at the front door beside my mom, using every ounce of strength in my body to keep my knees from buckling. When the kid’s dad came to the door, I think I hugged his leg and sobbed “I’m sorry” about forty times or something equally as brave and manly.

He was remarkably cool about it (at eight years old, I didn’t know that there were unwritten rules about beating the hell out of a sobbing kid, so I was surprised), and I said I wanted to apologize to Brian, too, if he was still alive. His dad called him upstairs and I was relieved to see that his brain was still on the inside of his head. The rock had hit him squarely between the eyes, leaving a decent sized cut just above his nose. His dad joked about it being a good shot, but it was the worst shot ever.

When we got home, I gave the slingshot to my mom and told her to burn it. She said, “Dad’s going to want to talk to you when he gets home, you know.”

Dad was due home in three days. You think it sucked to wait for your father to come home at six pm when you were in trouble as a kid? Try waiting until THURSDAY.

He got home and I tried the “it was an accident” excuse. He countered me by asking if I thought anyone would care if his co-pilot forgot to lower the landing gear one day and killed a whole mess of people “by accident”.

And in a blinding light of discovery, I learned the “Just because it’s not your fault doesn’t mean it’s not your problem” lesson. He told me that if that rock had hit two inches to either side of where it hit, I’d have to wake up every morning for the rest of my life knowing that that kid was blind and I was responsible. I’ll never forget that realization. I was lucky as hell.

It was a thirty minute “chat” during which I matured by several years.

The lessons I learned from my parents that week probably saved my life a few times as I grew up. My friends thought I was such a jerk because any time we were playing with anything that could cause harm or death I acted like the police, especially if whatever it was belonged to me.

Four or five years later, my friends and I had found a live .22 cartridge somewhere and were all excited about what to do with it…

Eric- “Gimme the bullet, Dusty. I wanna see what happens if I light it with the lighter.”

Me- “Do you think there is a way that that will not kill someone? No way you’re doing that.”

Jared- “Come on, you wimp. Quit being a baby.”

That was about the time I threw it into the pond behind his house, and I had to run home before my buddies killed me. I may as well have thrown our only ragged copy of playboy into a fire.

I knew that no matter what happened and who did it, if it was my slingshot/dart gun/bow and arrow/pellet gun, or if I was even involved I was at least partly responsible for what happened.

Even in high school I was pretty good at figuring out how not to screw up too badly. Most of my friends eventually learned the same lesson I had learned. I had just been fortunate enough to learn it much sooner. My friends would occasionally ask me to go with them to egg someone’s house, kill a hobo, or drink some old beer they found in their dad’s basement, but it pretty much came down to a simple rule I still use today-

If you have to stop and ask yourself if something is a good idea, it probably isn’t.

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