Fun Times Pt.Whatever

The Fun Times category encompasses those unfortunate events that can be looked back on with anything other than horror. The prowler/burglar that became a flying squirrel chase. The TV turning itself on, prompting myself and my brother to do honest-to-God house-clearing.

It is important to refer to Fun Times with an ironic, sarcastic tone in one's voice. The internet gun community calls what is to follow an After Action report. I can think of no better title for it.

Recently, it was implied that no one knows what they'll do when people start shooting at them.

At roughly 1 in the morning on Patriot's Day 2007, I now know.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Two days ago, I fell down a flight of stairs. Somewhere between 4-7 steps up, I twisted my ankle and gravity did what I had wanted to do, and I went downstairs rather quickly. Landed on the side of my ankle, fell into a wall...I'm lucky I didn't snap my ankle in half. I've been limping like Jimmy Donnelly ever since.

I've been sitting a lot, and putting my foot up, icing, that sort of thing. When I sat down tonight to watch Lost, I put my foot up on the entertainment center. I'm sitting in the chair next to the window, my mom's sitting and cross-stitching a few feet away, my dad's on his laptop on the couch behind us.

Previously, my mom had tripped over my dad's laptop cord, knocking a lamp over and snapping the bulb.

At the first commercial break, I get up to check something on the computer. Coming back into the hallway, I've got my hand on the refridgerator door, about to open it up and retrieve a Premium carbonated beverage. There's a crack, and a sound like the bulb snapping again, and about one second later my dad shouts "Get down! Someone's shooting at us!"

Not a thought crossed my brain for about two minutes. Complete blankness, like someone'd flipped a switch. No fear, none. No shock. Emptiness. I can't see bullet holes, I can't see any indication of that, but I drop to a crouch, and my shoe skids on a spray of broken glass. I had an impure thought. My mom's screaming and walking around trying to see where the shot/s came/are from, and my dad says "Get down!" again.

My brother's on the other end of the hallway with the living room between him and us, and he crawls across the hall.

I'm still not thinking at this point, but I remember knowing I was on the end of the house that didn't have the guns. Generally when I think of guns, I think of the pistols my dad and I keep near our respective beds. I remember I've got three assault rifles just down the stairs to my right, and I shout "Get the guns!"

My brother and I half fall down the steps (again) as my mom's calling 911 and my dad's trying to figure out just what the hell is going on. My brother goes to his bedroom for his rifle, I go the other way into the workroom.

Live and fight like you train I guess. Every time there's a gun in my hands, I chambercheck it and presscheck the magazine to make sure I'm safe. I remember (now) doing that as I headed out of the workroom.

At this point, I should remind you, I'm downstairs. I know that unless I've got the 108th airborne outside, I'm definitely better armed than whoever just fired into our living room, and I'm out of the line of fire. I'm safe as you can be when someone's just fired an unknown number of shots into your house.

I do not mean to toot my own horn, but...if I'm not supposed to know what to do when there's people shooting at you...I guess my body's defective. Same with my brother. Safe and armed, and we head back to the danger zone.

I went back upstairs. My brother's at the back door, checking the backyard. My dad's crossed the hall to his .45 and is scanning the front yard from a bedroom window. I drop down next to the living room window and look out. My mom shouts for me to get the birds from in front of the window. My dad shouts for me to get down. My mom shouts for me to get the bird. I got the bird.

I'm back to thinking again at this point, and I'm still stunned by the lack of bullet holes. Bird hitting the window maybe? But there is broken glass, and I trust my dad implicitly. I hunker down behind the couch and try and figure out where the threat is, what's going on, why would anyone shoot at us.

My dad gives the all clear - the front yard is empty. Same as the back according to my brother. My mom's crying and the woman on the other end of the phone is saying police are on their way. My dad says to put our rifles away. My brother and I ditch them in the basement, still loaded. I go upstairs, jack a round into my Beretta, and put it on safety in my belt. No way am I going unarmed right now. Coming down the hall from the other end of the room, I finally see the hole. It's the size of a rolling pin, and about a foot over where my head would be if I were sitting down with my feet up watching Lost.

My dad's gone outside, I go outside, he says the woman who lives across the street saw someone outside our house at the same time of the shooting, smelled smoke. I relay this information to my mom, for the benefit of the cop on the phone. I go back outside. The neighbor has left. Cop cars are blocking off the street. She comes back, and finally everybody's outside while the police are asking questions (they got here roughly 4-5 minutes after the call) and no one still has any idea what the hell is going on. She'd tracked the guy from the front of our house a couple of blocks in her jeep. The cops are on the radio trying to find him. The hole in our window looks even bigger outside than it does inside. At some point I don't remember, I've unloaded my Beretta so the police don't shoot me.

We finally found a ball about the size of a .38 round on the floor in the living room, matching a dent in our woodwork at the same height as the hole in the window. ****ing pellet gun...we think. At first we thought it was a slingshot...but the angle puts it about fifteen feet above the street, and when one of the officers shown his pistol laser through the hole back from the dent, the guys outside extrapolated it to a deck about a hundred yards away, through two back yards.

They picked up the guy the neighbor saw, frisked him and let him go. No gun, no slingshot, just a phone and a pack of smokes. I'm going looking around the neighborhood for the slingshot tomorrow.

About 10:30, roughly an hour and a half after this mess started, we put tape over the window, vaccuumed up the glass, and started trying to get ready for bed.

Now is when I'm scared. I had to pee something fierce for about half an hour after the cops left, and my arms feel like I've been lifting cinderblocks for the past six hours I'm so stressed. I can't walk in front of a window without flinching.

Some little human ****stain tried to HURT us. He used a weapon capable of causing harm to us, and scared us half to death. Either that or there's a worse possibility - that some little human ****stain gives so little thought to humanity that he'll pop off a ball bearing into someone's window, at RANDOM, for FUN. A threat I can deal with. Someone coming at me, someone means me or my family harm, I can and I will put them down without any emotion whatsoever, after tonight I know that. But RANDOM? Who the **** does this for fun? Who hurts random people for fun? Who scares middle aged couples and their teenaged kids for the **** of it? Who likes it, or maybe worse, doesn't care about it?

I'm pissed and a little scared and I don't feel safe anymore, and this little ***hole just further dimmed my view of humanity in general.

But now I know what I do when someone's shooting at me. It might've been a ball bearing coming through our window at 9:10 at night, but neither my mind nor my body knew that. I'm not proud or happy or elated or scared or anything else that when I could've stayed safe and armed I went back to the scene of the crime...it's just like "Ok." The only important thing though is that everyone including the pets is A-OK. That's all that matters.