The Shotgun Under the Bed

Cristina, my dad’s caregiver for several years, was thoroughly cleaning his house recently when she made a surprising discovery. My wife received her frantic call.

“There’s a gun under the bed!  I think it’s loaded!  What should I do?!”

“Call John. Give the gun to John.”

John lives nearby, is married to my first wife, and has a gun collection.   I’ve been told John never hunts, but for many years he has enjoyed practicing at a gun range every week.

John came by to pick up the shotgun.  My dad had hidden it under his bed for protection even though he had no training with guns. For years, however, he had been sleeping on a reclining chair in his living room in front of a large screen TV. When I lived with Dad for three months last year I slept in his bed. I had completely forgotten about the shotgun directly beneath me. Dad hadn’t mentioned it to me in more than thirty years.

I’ve had only two personal experiences with guns.  The first was when I was thirteen and a friend brought his BB gun to my house.  We decided that one of us would extend an arm holding a bottle – and the other would shoot at it.  After a few hours my parents discovered us, in effect, shooting at each other on the vacant lot in front of our house. They were horrified.

“Stop that immediately!  You could put someone’s eye out!”

That was the end of my youthful gun fun.

When I was twenty-nine my first wife and I took a cruise, from Los Angeles to Acapulco.  On one of the days at sea a member of the crew ran a shooting contest on the stern of the main deck.  I joined in.

He would pull a lever catapulting a clay target far into the air.  The passenger would aim the shotgun at the target and pull the trigger.  It seemed like great fun – until it was my turn.

I tried to follow the rising clay target through the gun sight, but never seemed to be successful with my aim as the target moved swiftly to my right.  Finally, just as the target began falling toward the sea, I pulled the trigger.  Blam!

Had I waited one second longer to shoot I would have hit the crewman directly in the face, and yet he had done nothing to warn me!  My hands were shaking as, I handed back the last gun I would ever touch. That was fifty years ago.

We all have life experiences that mark us, consciously or unconsciously, for the rest of our lives, and this is one of mine.  With hindsight, I realize that at the age of thirteen, and also at twenty-nine, I thought my judgment was very good.  Maybe it was, but not when it came to guns.

I’m glad my dad, in the dead of night, never had to try to find his gun and shoot at someone. That someone could very well have been another unintended victim – quite possibly me.

Alan