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I hope this doesn’t seem in poor taste after what happened yesterday at Virginia Tech, but…

I’ve always thought it would be awesome to get shot. Not the actual getting shot part, of course. I just think it would be neat if I could tell people that I took one to the shoulder or leg and then show them my awesome bullet wound scar. People would think I was tough when I told them about how I guess it kinda stung when the bullet hit but it’s really not as bad as everyone makes it sound.

The reality is that it would probably hurt like hell and no matter where the bullet hit, there’s a good chance I might die. I was mowing my yard yesterday and bumped my knuckle on something when I was starting the mower; it didn’t really hurt, but when I was done mowing my finger was covered in dried blood. I can’t imagine how much an actual bullet wound would bleed.

I actually have been shot on a couple of occasions, but not from a real bullet. The first such incident occurred when I was in the fifth grade. My friend Paul and his brother John, who lived across the street, had gotten a dartboard for Christmas that came with a CO₂ pistol that fired small darts. We were messing around in his room with it and joking about whether or not he would shoot me.

Then he shot me.

I don’t remember it hurting, only being stunned that I had a small metal pellet stick out of my forearm with some green fuzz on the back of it. The actual dart portion was only about 1/4″ long, so I just pulled it out and gave it back to him. In hindsight, I should have stabbed him with it, but he’d get his in due time.

I was a couple years older the next time I was the victim of a gun crime. Some of the neighborhood kids were in my backyard and bored, and we decided it would be a good idea to play a version of dodgeball. Instead of a red rubber ball, one person would sit on the back patio with a BB gun and try to hit everyone else as they ran from tree to tree at the back edge of the yard. I took a shot to the stomach, but it just stung a little bit. It didn’t even break through my t-shirt. BB’s move slowly enough through the air that you can see them coming at you, but I still got hit. In what I consider to be a bit of poetic justice, my friend Paul (the same one who shot me with the dart) took a BB to his lip that resulted in a fair amount of bleeding.

So there’s more evidence of a tiny, can-barely-call-it-an-injury that had a decent amount of blood coming out of it. I will take this opportunity to officially remove “Getting Non-Fatally Shot” off my list of life goals. Unless, of course, I am diving in front of a loved one to prevent them from getting shot, which would be worth the loss of blood for the staggering amount of cool points I would get for telling people that story. If any of you thinks you might be getting shot soon, please let me know so I can hang around you until it goes down. I’ll even yell, “NOOOOOOOOOO!” when I jump in front of you, I promise. It will totally be worth it for all involved.