What happened the year I turned eighteen? Well … not much
It was the summer after my senior year of high school at a party with way too much alcohol and way too many eighteen-year-olds. People were out drinking in the front lawn when someone found a pellet gun on the second floor of the house and decided it would be funny to spray the crowd with shots (Ed note: it was Bruce Pohlman. When asked laster he admitted he wasn’t thinking. Which, if you knew Bruce Pohlman, was a very plausible answer).
He hit my friend Neal in the shoulder and hit me in the cheek, which proceeded to swell up like the elephant man. Luckily my folks were out of town that weekend but when I got home, I woke my sister Kathy and we both decided I should go to the emergency room.
The third shift ER doctor had probably seen it all before. So, when I explained that I was running in a friend’s house and accidentally ran into a sculpture, he took it all in stride and ordered X-rays. He came back in and popped up the X-ray image on the screen. Then he looked at the X-ray, then looked at me. I looked at the X-ray, then looked at him. There was no denying that it was a pellet in my cheek. I came clean. He decided that there wouldn’t be any permanent damage, assigned me two Hail Marys, and suggested I go forth and sin no more.
I don’t remember how the transaction went down. I certainly didn’t have an insurance card. I’m not even sure I had a checking account. It seems likely that an eighteen year old went into emergency with a suspicious injury, got treated, paid with cash, and left.
The swelling had gone down considerably before my mom got home. She wasn’t pleased. It’s one thing to have your mom yell at you, another thing to have her punish you, but when you can hear the fear in her voice that really shakes you. She saw that an inch in any direction might have had significantly different results. Now I can’t say I quit doing stupid stuff at that point, but at least I’ve managed not to get shot again.
Just think how of this same event in today’s world. The gun Bruce Pohlman reached for wouldn’t be a pellet gun; it would be a real gun. The ending wouldn’t be anecdotal; it would be tragic.
The story still taps me on the shoulder though. I can go for years without giving it a thought, even forgetting which cheek, but the pellet’s there in perpetuity. Any time I get dental X-rays the dentist comes back kind of agog at the unidentified object in my cheek. And when I get an MRI, the technician looks at me like “dude, your head could’ve exploded,” (although I suspect they’re more concerned about damage to their machine – that whirring coffin must cost a pretty penny!)
I keep waiting for the follow-up question (“How did that happen?”) – I’ve practiced looking off to the horizon and then softly whispering “Misspent youth.” But, alas, no one ever asks! They just leave me and my pellet to make our way through a difficult world.
