12 April 1996, A day which will live in infamy

12 April, 1996, A day which will live in infamy. No, Pearl Harbor didn't get attacked again on that date.  It was the day I found out the important people in my life.

The day started like any other. Up at 5:30 or 6:00 am, fix breakfast for Christopher and I, Feed Shep, our dog, and then the triple "S" (shit, shower and shave). I tried to leave for work about 7:00am while I was in the Air Force. I enjoyed walking around the office, drink a cup of coffee or two and prepare for the class I was going to teach that morning. The class I was teaching that morning was yearly "Block Training". It was about 7 or 8 different sections in the class, everything from Self-Aid Buddy care to ejection seat training.  50 minutes of teaching and a 10 minute break every hour.  We always had about 40 Airman in class.  I had been teaching at that time about 3 years and REALLY had a great deal of fun teaching most days.

I was sitting at my desk, having a debate with another instructor about something and the phone on my desk rang. It was the Sumter County Sheriff's department. They went on to tell me that Christopher was ok but he had shot through his left hand with a small .25 pistol I had stored in an outside shed.   I was crushed!  I had a #2 pencil in my right hand that I crushed in to 5 pieces when the shock of what I had been told hit me. I was stunned.

I turned my seat around and my boss was standing right there. I told him what had happened and I was off to Tuomey Hospital about as fast as I could go.  Truth be told, I went from Shaw AFB to Tuomey Hospital about 80mph all the way down Broad street and didn't get a speeding ticket.  The 1991 Ford Escort I had got driven very hard that day.

When I got to the room Christopher was in, I walked in and the first words out of my mouth were "I guess you know you're grounded" The answer he gave me was a weak "yes sir". He was 12 years old.  For as much as I was about half mad, I was 100% heart broken seeing my only child suffering so.  I had been given that .25 pistol by a guy because I helped him fix his car and he had a small child in his house and didn't need a gun around the house.  When I got it home, I took the magazine and bullets out of the gun, and I let Christopher look at it because I KNEW he liked guns. He always has liked guns. I also told him NOT to touch that gun unless I let him and I was with him and I remember telling him that 3 different times.

Well, he had broken my rule about that and he was paying for it in a big way AND he was grounded....not a good day for my kid.

It was a comedy of errors as to how my son came to have my pistol in his hand and it came to be loaded. I usually kept the gun in the outside shed and the bullets and magazine in the house, away from each other. Seems I had a neighbor who was a drug dealer and an alcoholic and he was rarely sober most days. The weekend before he had been in his front yard, yelling and screaming up a storm and he wasn't shy about who he talked to or about what he talked about....he was a really messed up guy.  He seemed to be trying to engage me in conversation about something or other....... Trust me on this, you can't talk to anyone who is drunk or high.....it just doesn't work well. I had a feeling he might try to come raise cane in my front yard. I got the gun from the shed, the magazine from my nightstand and I loaded the pistol and put in my pocket. If he decided to bring his conversation in my yard, I was going to blow his kneecap clean off..... Well, as the day wore on, my drunk/high neighbor finally went back into his house and I put the gun back in the shed BUT I didn't remove the magazine from the pistol and I didn't remove the bullet from the chamber I had ready to shoot if it came to that.....I had never shot that weapon and knew that it was darn near brand new and was mostly unused.

Christopher told me he climbed up on the freezer and removed the gun from an old wok I had purchased someplace. He said he was trading it from his right hand to his left hand when it went off. After the bullet went through his hand, it lodged in the wooden door facing of the shed.  God blessed my son that morning. For all he had done wrong, he then proceeded to walk back in the house, stop the bleeding on his hand, call 911, walked out in the front yard to flag down the sheriff when he missed the house.  I'm not sure an adult could have kept it together quite so good.

It all turned out well in the end. The hospital patched him up and we told him to tell his friends he had his hand slammed in a car door and leave it at that if anyone ask about his hand.  It made me realize that for as hard as a child is to raise some days, it really did hurt my heart to see him hurting, no matter what the reason.

He really didn't get grounded.  When he came back home and saw the trail of blood on the carport and in the kitchen, he lost it in a way I had never seen him breakdown before.  I remember walking into the living room and he was still crying a bit and I told him....."I've never seen you this tore up about anything, you aren't grounded, go be a 12 year old and play with Shep. Go be a kid, we will work out some sort of punishment later on".....It just seemed to me that he was hurting enough between his ears and I didn't need to pile any more hurt on him.  The punishment I worked out was I made him draw a picture of Bugs Bunny as the King of England out of a Looney Tunes book I had. He was/is a really good artist. Its a beautiful drawing and I still have it and it is the one thing I have from Christopher that is very special to me, besides my granddaughters....

12 April, 1996 wasn't a great day but I found out how much I loved my kid, even if he did do something stupid....he might have made a stupid mistake, but he was ALIVE and very lucky.

Having never shot that pistol, I took it out in my back yard a few days later and shot it at a pine tree just to see how loud it was.  I was outside and my ears rang a bit.....I can only imagine the noise of the shot, the shock of being hurt and my son still had the presents of mind to help himself get help at the house.  I guess when the chips are down you really don't realize how able you might be until you are under pressure.  I'm sure it wasn't easy for him.  I was very proud of how he kept his head screwed on straight even after the confusion of such an accident.

The pistol is in a bunch of pieces now and I've never put it back together or shot it again.....I still have it but it will stay in pieces.....because of one day, a very long time ago.

Thanks Christopher for allowing me to write this.....I'm not sure why it was on my mind.  Love you!

J.