Oct 25 2008
My First Time: To Dodge Bullets Zinging Overhead
My First Time To Dodge Bullets Zinging Overhead sounds pretty darn scary, I’ll admit. And by golly, it was!
Now, unless you happen to be Angelina Jolie or Keanu Reeves, you can’t really “dodge” bullets, but it does have a nice ring to it.
I was ten years old, in 1957, and visiting my North Dakota Cousins, who I never used to admit to having, since they damn near shot me!
We were wandering around out in the pasture and “boonies” and, like many farms in prairie country, the “cousins” had a big dam that held water for the livestock. This pond also attracted wildlife, including ducks.
“Ducks” is an OPERATIVE word here, since I suddenly heard bullets zinging overhead before I actually heard any shots being fired, and I DUCKED as fast as you can imagine a scared kid could duck. With my face planted in the dirt behind a small hill, I (and the one cousin who was with me), started yelling like crazy at the cousins on the other side of the pond who were shooting at ducks on the water.
When a .22 caliber bullet strikes water it ricochets off in a totally random direction. I didn’t want to be in any of the random directions.
Eventually the “shooting cousins” heard us (between shots) and when they yelled back at us, we “jumped” up and waved and yelled some more! The “shooting cousins” started laughing, and that really made me mad.
I was almost mad enough to “tell” on them, but their size and threats convinced me to keep my mouth shut. To this day.
