Doghouse

The Tooth

Tracer gun unmodified.




I just had to take the thing apart and bend the wire back so it would kick like a mule. Sure, it only fired one out of three shots...but when it did...whammo!

This is another Simpson story. And it is all true.

I was young and full of hubris (as opposed to now when I am old and full of hubris) so I had a photo outside my room that showed me with two shotguns, sunglasses, and a ridiculous semi-safari outfit befitting a Hemingway illegitimate child. The caption read "Do you feel lucky?"

Now just to set the scene, the dorm rooms at Simpson were very small. In fact, sleeping on the top bunk you had about 3 inches of breathing room. Below was the desk and then books and it faced the door. The coffeemaker was recessed and secreted away and just made the whole dorm floor go "brown" when I used it.

Well they came for me one night. I mean...given the picture they had to.

"Mac!! boom boom boom!!! We feel LUCKY!"

I sighed. I put aside Spurgeon's Treasury of David, took out my modified tracer gun, put on my sunglasses and braced myself.

They had Devan Devan in the hallway and he had keys. There was no reason for Devan Devan Olsen to ever have been entrusted with keys...I mean he was growing pot in the rotunda on a regular basis...still I heard them jangle and I tensed up.

I would forgive him later.

*******

The door burst open and seven guys tried to wedge in to blast me to bits.

They had longstanding issues with other people and I was the immediate occasion.

It all happened in slow motion. The incoming tracers were impressive. Five went wide right and thwaked into my back window. Six other went left or down. One bounced off my glasses immediately...another off my cheek, two others off my arms.

Hey...seven against one.

Meanwhile I fired...but remember...my gun only went off one out of three times.

I saw Dirk Bond (God he must have hated me), and John Sloper and Clausin but the guy I knew wanted me dead was Skover.

Now I would say that it is a strange thing to be in a Bible College where people truly hate each other...but then read today's paper about the Middle East.

Skover hated me. I did not hate him, but I recognized his glee in hating me and I thought it wrong. I mean it was not spiritually healthy for his hating me to go unaddressed.

So I addressed it.

With a tracer.

*******

Now in retrospect Skover was really a sweet guy. He was. Actually every one of those guys were really great...Sloper, Bond, Clausin...and the three others. Devan Devan Olsen is one of my favorite people...I mean who shows up to a Bible Study with a tomahawk? ...But that is another story).

But Skover was my target as I was already dead.

It was the "glee" factor that I recognized. So I shot as the hail of tracers flooded my room (see above).

I focused and shot.

First two triggers were duds. The third kicked out wide right. The next wide left (or maybe glanced off of Sloper's already balding head.

But the fifth....ahhhh...thing of beauty. Straight and true and it caught poor Skover on the very awfully-nervy edge of his front tooth.

"OH GOD!" he reeled back, taking four guys with him in his agony. They spilled backwards into the hallway. I got up and slammed the door and that was that.

All ya need is one real good shot.

Too bad it doesn't happen more often.

posted by Obi-Mac BakDon @ 9:26 PM