Fully Loaded
by Sterling Warner
The first time Linda shot me was accidental. We were only eight years old back then, and we had been playing cops and robbers. To liven things up, she got the revolver her father kept under his bedroom pillow, chased me around the house, tripped over a rug, pulled the trigger, and sent a slug into my left foot.
In my senior year of high school, Linda and I caught a special screening of The Blob, starring Steve McQueen. The next afternoon marked her 18th birthday, so I decided to surprise her by rigging up my lawn chair with red helium balloons and float into her backyard.
Now, to be perfectly fair, I did sort of sneak up on her as she carefully focused and then fired BB gun pellets at blooming sunflowers. However, when a couple balloons rubbed against the chimney as I drifted over Linda’s house, she wheeled around and began shooting.
“It’s me, Linda!” I shouted as several BBs popped balloons, pierced my arms and sent me crashing onto her patio.
“You should have said something, Charles. From where I’m standing, you looked like the scarlet blob approaching overhead to devour me.”
“Only CO2 will stop the blob,” I laughed, “not bullets. At least, according to McQueen.”
“You’re a hoot” — Linda smiled as she kissed my minor wounds — “but not really hurt. Now let me finish before we go inside!” Picking up her BB gun, she lifted it to her shoulder, squinted her eyes like Clint Eastwood, and shot the head off the last sunflower blossom in the backyard.
After graduating from college, we got married. On our honeymoon, when she thought I was a burglar attempting to break into our suite, she fired her new SIG Sauer — a .380 handgun — into the pitch-black door opening and lodged a bullet in my right shoulder.
I understood Linda’s zeal, of course, and encouraged her independence. Still, when she realized that I had been the victim of her defensive gesture, she merely became irritated. “I suppose you’ll be wanting me to call for an ambulance.” She sighed. “This is so typical of you, Charles!”
Believe me, I felt horrible about the whole thing, and my bloody wound hurt as well. About five minutes after I asked Linda to go to the pharmacy for some aspirin and gauze, someone knocked on the door.
“Just a minute,” I replied. Opening the door, I explained how I had been unpacking my pistol but set it off unintentionally. “No need for a doctor,” I assured. “Once my wife gets back and patches up my graze, I’ll come down to the lobby and file an official report if you like.”
“Thank you, Mr. Jenkins. Are you sure you need no medical assistance?”
“Yes, I’m certain. ‘’Tis but a scratch.’” I smiled, doing my best Black Knight impression from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
The hotel manager winked his eye and replied, “Only a flesh wound, eh?” Shaking his head and chuckling, he entered the elevator and, unknowing, passed Linda.
Linda became a standing member of the NRA the following year, explaining that she slept better at night knowing someone out there encouraged her “bear arms.” The concept of “use with caution” really irked her. Yes, Linda carried everywhere, even in church. “One can’t be too careful,” she lectured me. “The devil often assumes pleasing forms.”
One day, during the preacher’s sermon, I reached to rest my hand on hers reassuringly. However, she’d moved her hand from the church bench to her purse, grasped her handgun, and slid her index finger to the trigger. I guess I’d startled her. In a moment of passion, perhaps she thought my palm was the hand of Satan? Whatever the reason, the gun fired, and a bullet grazed my knee and desecrated a Bible before stopping in the wooden bench in front of us.
By my forty-fifth birthday, I had lost all my hair. However, Linda and I were still together and lived along the Sacramento Delta. That fall, we decided to ignore tradition and bag a couple of quail and a pheasant or two for Thanksgiving dinner. Now, perhaps Linda needed glasses; I had hinted as much for years. Or maybe she honestly had difficulty identifying her target. At any rate, she fired both barrels of her 12-gauge shotgun into the tule fog. Fortuitously, my ample gluteus maximus easily absorbed a butt full of buckshot!
Time has a way of overcoming all of us. Twenty-seven years later, for instance, Linda’s macular degeneration had caused permanent vision loss. Nonetheless — at point-blank range — she managed to bombard my chest with the entire contents of an assault rifle. In hindsight, selling our vast firearm collection for cash and investing in a couple of automatic water-gun blasters had proven an auspicious decision!
Copyright © 2021 by Sterling Warner
