My new BB gun and the day I nearly shot my eye out

My new BB Gun and the day I nearly shot my eye out.

Jan. 6, 1980, dawned covered in snow, just like it did this morning.

I turned 13 and was finally receiving the birthday present I’d looked forward to for years: a BB gun.

My parents had insisted I wait until i was 13, and allegedly mature enough to handle the responsibility of a BB gun.

I never had an interest in killing, so birds were safe around me but glass bottles would always be doomed to destruction.

And so it was, 45 years ago today, with a world in white, I unboxed the culmination of my childhood desires and beheld my new BB gun.

I’d like to say that the moment was everything I had imagined for so long, but I have no such memory. Because while my parents fulfilled my birthday wish with a new Daisy BB gun, they failed to purchase BBs. (This moment perfectly encapsulated my childhood.)

I had a brand new BB gun and no BBs, and with a foot of snow covering the landscape, no hope of my parents driving to the store to purchase any.

And so I walked.

I bundled up and trudged through deep, blowing snow to the farm store, where I bought two, large containers of BBs.

Over time I bought pounds of BBs as well as paper targets I shot into confetti.

I took my Daisy with me when I went off to college, and had it on hand when I heard the mouse scratching around in the kitchen of my rodent infested apartment.

The mouse had gotten down into the bottom of the tall, plastic garbage can with no hope of escape.

If I thought to take the garbage can outside and dump out the mouse, I have no recollection.

I do remember putting the muzzle of the gun a half an inch away from the filthy rodent with the intention of blasting a BB through it’s tiny brain.

I gently applied pressure to the trigger as I had thousands of times before.

The BB missed the mouse, ricocheted off the bottom of the trashcan and hit me in the face, under my glasses, just below my eye.

Trying to execute a mouse, I nearly shot my eye out.

Oh, the things that happen in the bleak midwinter.

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Pastor Jim Meisner, Jr. is the author of the novel Faith, Hope, and Baseball, available on Amazon, or follow this link to order an autographed copy. He created and manages the Facebook page Faith on the Fringe.