Most people will recognize this line from "A Christmas Story" just before the department store Santa uses his patent-leather boot to push Ralphie down the slide.

Let's dial the time machine back to 1974. A nice spring day that started uneventfully as my brother and I got home from school. When I still had 20-20 vision ... in both eyes.

After an episode of "Gilligan's Island" on the nine-inch black-and-white TV in the bedroom, I decided to start delivering my newspapers. My brother Tim was still watching television.

Two side notes here. 1) A nine-inch black-and-white television! For most of my childhood, I thought the Skipper wore a red shirt and Gilligan wore a blue shirt. 2) For several years after high school, I had occasional nightmares that I was still a paperboy. Despite the fact that it put money into my pocket, I honestly will say right now that I hated that job. Of course, the only thing worse than delivering a newspaper is working for one. Oh wait -- that's my life now ... damn.

Back to the story. I was pulling my stack of Homestead Messengers out from under the door mat. The stack fell over. Tim stuck his head out the door and ordered, "Hey, pick those up!"

"Shut up, fag!" Ahh, brotherly love. As unfolding events will reveal, he didn't really like what I said to him.

Tim pulled his head back into the house and disappeared. I gathered my 30 or so Messengers and 50 or so Pittsburgh Presses and headed for my route. My neighbor, Barry Kamensky, was out, so we began talking about nothing in particular.

I was at the end of our sidewalk, maybe 25 feet from the corner of the porch. Why is this important? I vaguely recall seeing Tim on the porch, presumably to get his newspapers.

I swear today that the next thing I remember is laying flat on my back, holding my hand over my eye, crying like there was no tomorrow. Tim apparently had shot me in the eye with a BB gun. I managed to get to my feet, still bent over holding my hand over my left eye.

Barry grabbed Tim, and said, "Free shot," which meant that I should punch Tim while Barry pinned Tim's arms behind his back.

Hey, I've been shot here. I don't think I'm in any condition to be taking swings at anyone. (As it turns out, it probably wouldn't have hurt him, because Tim has a freakishly high tolerance for pain.)

After a few minutes, I realized that the back of my skull was intact, so I ran into the bathroom and pulled up the corner of my eye, and the BB fell out. No bloody mess, no swelling, nothing, just a little red mark on the white of my eyeball.

Tim and I laugh about this part today, whenever I bring it up, while anyone around cringes. Invariably, it always leads to the following statement from him: "You know it was an accident. I didn't mean to shoot you in the eye. I was aiming for your leg ..."

Boys being boys, I cleaned myself up, splashed some water on my face to wash away my tears and went out and delivered my newspapers, although by the time I go to the end by the high school, my vision was starting to get cloudy. Tim, who apparently was worried, caught up with me. On the walk home, we concocted ... meaning he thought it up, and I agreed to it ... this story that involved me walking into a tree branch.

That story worked for about a day until Barry's sister, Mary, ratted us out (as I found out a couple of weeks later). Hey, it's another girl ratting out the brothers. A pattern develops.

Then there was hell to pay. My dad watched as Tim sawed all of the BB guns in half, including the single-pump Crossman that Lee Harvey Oswald used on me.

My brother later went on to become a marksman with every weapon, shooting on the governor's team and once missing only three shots all year. Some years after the BB-gun "incident," I watched him shoot about 60 pigeons one summer, including some that were several hundred feet away. And this is the guy who couldn't hit me in the leg from 25 feet.

My vision in that eye got worse, and later that summer I strapped on my first pair of glasses. Sometime in the mid-1990s, I got tired of wearing glasses, so I put them away and that was that. My right eye is still much better than my left eye, but for now it's good enough.

Generally, about once a year, I like to tweak his conscience, so I usually the start the conversation with something like, "Hey, remember that time you shot me in the eye on purpose?"

To show how much I learned from this, the next year we were in the basement of some friends having a BB-gun battle while our parents were out to dinner. At least I was wearing glasses this time. A few years after that, Tim and I were trying an even more dangerous stunt that involved leather work gloves, wood, firecrackers and possibly an M-80 until I refused to light the 1/8th stick of dynamite.

The young are dumb, and young boys are even dumber. Hide the BB guns, sharp objects and anything flammable. I swear that it's a minor miracle we emerge from childhood with our fingers and toes in place.

 
[Got a comment?]
 
Back to Ramblings