Tales from the REAL O.C. - Bang, Bang, My Baby Shot Me Down...
- posted by Legal Bitch @ 11:29 AM | Permanent Link

From earlier posts, all of you should know about the prevalence of guns in my family's household. You should also know that shooting practice with children under the age of 10 spells disaster.

My grandmother lived next door to my family while I was growing up. She was the most foul-tempered, paranoid woman I've ever known (God rest her soul). She suspected that doom and gloom was around every corner and would badger you endlessly about things she thought were a danger to your safety (like shooting guns). There was a large field that faced the road which separated my family's property from our grandmother's, and it contained the most haggard looking homemade scarecrow (even though there were no crops in the field, we made a scarecrow). My brother and I loved to shoot at the scarecrow, which was made out of my dad's old police uniforms, my uncle's paint stained overalls, an old sombrero, and had plastic McDonald's plates for hands. It made the greatest "thump" noise when you hit it (our dad told us it sounded very similar to shooting a real person with a pellet gun - hell yeah!)

So one day, my brother and I were shooting bb guns at the scarecrow (I believe I was 5 and he was 10 at the time). So of course, granny comes wandering over yelling about us putting our eye out or shooting each other or shooting a car (mind you, we were shooting toward the road - livin' on the edge!). My brother yelled at her to buzz off, turned around and started shooting at the plates again. Cue granny screaming...this time in pain!

Turns out one of the bb's ricocheted off my Grimace plate, and hit my grandmother sqaure in the temple. The bb embedded itself under her skin, and remained there for the rest of her life (so every time she and my brother would argue it sounded something like this: Grandma says "Don't cut onions unless they're underwater or you'll dye your hands purple!" Brother: "Shut up grandma!" Grandma: "You shot me dammit, you little shit!" Brother: "I might just do it again if you don't shut up!"). Years and years later when our grandmother passed away from a long illness, we had her cremated and her ashes interred next to my grandpa. As my family was sitting in Morrison's Cafeteria sharing a family meal after the funeral, my brother and I grew quiet and caught each other's eye. My brother smiled and asked me, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" I replied "We should have asked the funeral home to see if that damn bb was in her ashes before they buried her."