And then, I shot myself

OK, here we go... I have yet again had the subject of today's Blog chosen for me. This time by my dear daughter, who told everyone on her Blog that I had once shot myself - And said that I would probably tell you all about it, as you seem to enjoy stories of my misfortunes.

Firstly, I'd like to take a few moments to look at the whole 'accidentally shooting yourself' issue.

Weaponry is a lot more widespread and more easily available over the pond, and as a large proportion (over 25%) of the visitors to this site hail from the Grande Olde US of A, I am expecting all kinds of safety advice is going through their heads right about now, and they're just itching to post it. I'll save some of them the trouble:

1. Never play with a loaded weapon.
2. Always make sure the weapon is unable to fire if you're cleaning it.
3. Never point a weapon at yourself, loaded or not (You wouldn't believe the flak I got for my choice of Facebook Timeline image - Especially when they found out it was The Mini Dandy's hand, and the gun was actually pointed at my head - And when they saw that the safety was off... Well, it took them weeks to wind down)
4. Never point a weapon at anything that you don't want to make go away. (And by 'Go Away' I mean, to shuffle off this mortal coil and join the choir invisibule)

People shoot themselves a lot more than you think, there's no end of stories of people shooting themselves in the foot, and losing fingers or being hit in the ass by a ricochet *cough* Mrs Dandy *cough* but you don't get many stories that pan out the way that mine did.

I'm hoping that this paticular story will act as a cautionary tale, but I'm also pretty sure it will make you laugh - I mean, who doesn't like to see over-confident idiots getting it really, really wrong and hurting themselves quite badly?

I know I do.

So, just sit back, relax, turn your schadenfreude dial up to eleven, and listen to the tale of:

The Day The Chimping Dandy shot himself.

It was only a few weeks after the events of Friday's Blog, still summer, still hot, still lazing around the house drinking beer and being irresponsible. These were the times that I refer to, in conversation, as 'The Good Old Days'. SMick and myself were sat, as was our custom at the time, in the front garden of my house enjoying the sunshine. We were drinking beer and thinking of things to do that were a) possible and b) within our somewhat limited budget. The list wasn't particularly extensive if I'm honest and it often contained the words beer, sun, nothing and more beer. And we were in grave danger of spiralling into another day, which whilst not exactly wasted, certainly wasn't turning out to be particularly productive.

Suddenly, the day took a turn for the... ah... well, not exactly better... More sort of... erm... odder, as Gullible Steve pulled up, got out of his car and asked us what we were up to. Steve's presence seemed to act as a catalyst and I decided, that rather than just lying in the sun all day, I'd do a bit of target practice.

Now, I wasn't drunk, as such... I mean I'd never, well not very often at least, I'd say it would be quite unlikely that I'd choose to handle a weapon of any kind whilst drunk - I'd at least think about it for a second or to before doing it anyway... Probably.

So, I suddenly found myself lying in front of my open garage door, on the bonnet of (somebody's) car, with my head on the windscreen, taking aim at the door into the house from the garage (which was a firedoor - I'd assumed that it was in some way 'toughened'). The first shot flew between my outstretched feet and took a decent sized chunk out of the back of the door - The noise was considerably louder than I thought it would be, the garage walls acting as an amplifier, to the point where I thought it might attract the attention of the neighbours. I decided that I'd take one more shot and then call it a day, before the Five-oh turned up.

I looked down the sight, lined up the centre of the door and sent the signal to my fingers to fire. Now, a number of things happened at the same time:

SMick shouted 'Steve!'

Steve, who had wandered into the garage to look at the damage I'd done to the door, moved into my field of view and started to bend down and pick up the chunk of wood that had detached itself.

I pulled my arm up and to the right to try and not shoot Steve in the head.

I fired.

Luckily, the shot went wide, but I still only missed Steve's head by about three inches. It took a fair chunk out of the brickwork around the doorframe and came straight back at me.

It hit me in the left forearm, and it bloody hurt - I've still got the scar, it's about three inches long and pretty feint, you have to bear in mind this was twenty-five years ago. Another thing to bear in mind was that my left arm was tight up against my chest, due to me lying on the bonnet of the car, so if I'd got hit four inches to the right, you wouldn't be reading this...

And then there's the other thing... Most of you reading this will have assumed that I was firing some sort of gun, possibly the .50AE in my timeline picture - This is not, however the case. I was using a 5' Flatbow and I had three feet of wood sticking out of my arm, Oh, yes, and I was holding the bow with my feet.

The arrow was removed in the traditional style, i.e. with uproarious laughter from everyone but Steve. And bandages were amateurishly applied.

Steve stayed frozen to the spot, bent almost double, for a good few minutes, and the garage floor stood silent testament to the fact that he'd been really, really scared.

So, now you know, you have a new story to tell your friends in the pub - about a guy who shot himself - With a bow and arrow (That he'd been holding with his feet).

(Feel free to pass any of the Blog stories on - If you think to credit me then that's be great, even if it's just 'There's this weird guy on the Internet called the Chunking Monkey or something and he did this really stupid thing')