In the fall of 2004, October 7th to be exact, I finally felt ready to fire my dad’s rifle. It’s a beautiful gun really. It’s a Winchester .308 semi-automatic. I slowly took it out of its case and took out the clip. Empty. So I went outside to make myself a target. I found a piece of chipboard and drew a rough bull’s eye on it. Perfect, I said to myself, and I carried it out underneath the apple trees. I set it up at the perfect angle so I could see it ok from the deck. Then I went back inside.
I grabbed the hunting bag and pulled out four bullets. I slowly and carefully loaded them into the clip. I shouldered the rifle, and held the clip in my hand as I headed out to set myself up on the deck.
Double-checking to make sure that the safety was on, I knelt down on one knee, and loaded the clip into the rifle. I lined up my sights, and flicked the safety off. I moved my finger to the trigger, and CRACK. The shot rang out. But all was not well. As soon as I had pulled the trigger, I felt excruciating pain spread from the point of origin. The bridge of my nose.
I calmly put the safety back on, set the gun down on the deck, and covered my nose with my hands. No tears came to my eyes, and surprisingly, no blood came from my nose. I went inside, and my dad asked me what had happened. My voice was quivering as I told him that I thought I had broken my nose. For some odd reason, he found my story funny. I asked him why he was laughing, and he told me that my uncle used to do the same thing every time he fired the .308.
When he finished telling me about all the times my uncle had hit himself, I was laughing, and crying. I went and looked in the mirror, and saw the cut on the left side on the bridge of my nose. It wasn’t bleeding very much, but the sight of blood with that much pain made me cry. Needless to say the other three bullets stayed in the clip.
I got a facecloth from the bathroom and filled it with ice cubes. I sat on the couch with my head back, bag of ice on my nose. I was hoping to stop the swelling, but to no avail, my nose looked twice its size. I took three Tylenol and went to bed. My head felt like it was going to explode, but soon enough, the Tylenol kicked in and I was fast asleep.
When the Tylenol wore off, I felt like I had been run over by a moose. My stomach was heaving, my mouth was dry, and of course, my nose was still sore. I got up, had something to eat and took two more Tylenol. I was back to la-la land. When I woke up in the morning to go to school, I had a black eye. Mom said it had something to do with the broken blood vessels. I didn’t argue her thesis.
I went to school with the black eye. Obviously it was noticed and my story spread throughout the school quite quickly. When my friends asked why I had a black eye, I really should have said you should have seen the other guy…but I didn’t. They all thought it was pretty funny, and started giving me advice on how to properly fire a gun. I just told them that I wasn’t touching the rifle again.
Thus concludes the way to break your nose, hick style.
