Now, everybody just calm down. Before you work yourselves up into some kind of acidic lather over the Vice President’s “accident” (Jon Stewart has been basically having a weeklong drooling seizure of joy, and has peed his pants on the air twice), let’s all just take a deep breath, and repeat this mantra: “Sometimes stuff just happens…sometimes stuff just happens…sometimes stuff just happens…”

I’m no defender of this administration. I agree with the overarching policy of killing as many foreigners as possible, although I tend to disapprove of their methods. And if you’d told me that a Republican administration would be rampantly expanding government…well, I’d probably not be terribly surprised. Politicians are politicians, and government is government, and no administration in 80 years has decreased the size of the federal government. All that being said: I can sympathize with the Vice President.

I feel bad for the 78-year-old fellow that Mr. Cheney peppered with #7 bird shot, but from what I’ve been told, he and the Vice President had established a firing line. Mr. Whittington stepped in front of it, for reasons unknown. (Of course, all of this is on the word of the veep and his entourage, so who knows what really happened?) More importantly: I can relate to Mr. Cheney’s side of the story, and thereby hangs a tale.

When I was in high school, I spent a significant number of evenings at Brian Smith‘s house, in the basement, where he had a pool table, and all the broken microwaves and washing machines you could ever want. The pool table served four handy purposes:

  1. as a surface on which people could make out with other people,
  2. the actual playing of billiards,
  3. the playing of pool hockey, which consisted of putting the cue ball on the table and hammering it back and forth with rolls of paper towel until somebody managed to pocket it in an opponent’s corner (a sort of poor man’s air hockey),
  4. and a surface on which you could like while shooting Brian’s old Crosman BB-gun at cans set up on a washing machine across the room.

The impromptu shooting range we set up worked nicely, but it had one fatal flaw: the basement steps ended right in the middle of it. Anyone coming down into the basement would walk directly into the line of fire. Normally it wasn’t a major issue, because Brian’s mom had better sense than to interfere with the activities of 3-5 teenaged boys and didn’t do much more than yell down the steps to yell information to Brian (“Anybody want some chips or sodas,” “One of those slutty girls you like is on the phone,” “Please stop shooting at that washing machine, your father swears he’s going to fix it,” etc.). Anyone else that would come down was invariably one of us, and would be aware of any shooting occuring, and would pause at the top of the stairs to yell “PLEASE DON’T SHOOT ME IN THE ARM YOU IDIOT” and wait until the range had been declared clear (usually via “JUST COME DOWN YOU WUSS, IT’S JUST A FREAKIN’ BB”).

One day, I was lying on the pool table, taking careful aim at either a can of soda or Brian’s butt. I took a deep breath, as prescribed by good marksmanship practice, let half of it out, and began slowly squeezing the trigger. Just before the trigger broke, the basement door open, and some individual, unconscious of the mortal danger they were in, began loping down the steps. Brian yelled out “hold it!” just as my trigger finger jerked back and sent a BB downrange at what must have been 200-300 feet per second. Immediately afterwards, the figure atop the staircase bent down, and I realized it was Brian’s father (a man with whom one does not mess). He glared at me with such fire that, even now, 10 years later, I still have no visible eyebrows.

I’m just saying: it’s easier than you think to accidentally shoot another man in the face.

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  1. Michael
    February 27th, 2006 at 14:50 | #1

    OMG. I think i soiled myself. Bing the BB gun for the next tape library we have to diagnose…

  2. Kyle
    March 2nd, 2006 at 17:16 | #2

    You don’t have to remind ME about the pool table…it’s in my personal Hall of Fame, on the wing with Craig’s bed, my dad’s box of condoms I would, uh, borrow from, and the Naamans Little League parking lot.

    Ahh….junior…I mean, highschool. Good times.

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