Dear hearts, my name is Roberta George, and I live in Valdosta, Georgia. Over the years, I’ve accumulated a few stories about accidental shootings and odd things, the mystery of them. 

That obsession, which is almost a hobby of mine, is hard to explain, but it started with my father, Robert H. Haas. A pilot in World War II, he later became an officer with the Border Patrol in Gila Bend, Arizona. He knew a lot about guns and ammunition and was extremely careful with them. 

One afternoon, after he’d spent an hour cleaning his firearms, he carried a very large gun, an M4, that we girls called our dad’s “elephant gun,” and walked down the hall of our modest home. I was right behind him when the gun went off, a terrific noise, blowing a hole in the ceiling.

“My God,” my father said. “That’s impossible.”

I was in the fourth grade at the time, and here it is all these decades later, and I can still remember the look of utter incomprehension on his face. He returned to the living room and said, what has stayed with me forever, “The devil put a bullet in the chamber.” It was his take on the accident and it never changed. He also swore, “I never pulled the trigger” (Alec Baldwin’s stand) and “The devil put a bullet in the chamber.”

Of course, over the years, everyone has read or heard on the news the horror stories of accidental shootings: the grandchild shot in the grocery buggy by a gun in the grandmother’s purse, the woman keeping a supposedly unloaded gun for her son and, upon taking it out of the drawer, shoots herself dead. 

An officer in the Air Force, whose job it was to load a gun with a clip and make the late-evening check out of the building, was locking up. The clip was always kept in one drawer, the gun in another; but somehow they came together, and he not knowing, does something he never does: he pulls the trigger and shoots a hole in the ceiling. 

Another person in our neighborhood, who swears the gun wasn’t loaded, shoots himself in the foot and requires numerous surgeries over the years, all the while proclaiming: “I swear to you that gun wasn’t loaded.”

When I tell my friend my Dad’s theory, he sighs in relief, saying, “Thank God, that explains it.”

Telling these tales to my son, Robert, and his new bride, I say, “People are always having unexplained accidents with guns.” My son’s wife says, “We did.” My son, aghast, says, “You promised never to tell that story,” but then goes on to explain that he was teaching his new wife how to use a gun and was absolutely sure it wasn’t loaded until he shoots a hole in the floor of their apartment. She still says she never pulled the trigger.

Recently, at a meeting of the Snake Nation Press’ writers’ group, I lost a shoe, one shoe, under a table at the Turner Center for the Arts. Everyone in the class helped me look but the shoe was never found. I left the Center, limping, wearing one shoe. Several weeks later, another writer puts his floppy hat under the table and it disappears. We all, about eight people, look again and again for at least 30 minutes; the hat, along with the shoe, never shows up.

Think of it. Do you have some instance in your life that can never be explained? Is there something about guns that causes accidents to happen? Why don’t police shoot over people’s heads? That would show the criminals that they were being shot at, in danger of losing their lives, and yet give them a chance to surrender. Anything to avoid killing someone. 

I believe that no policeman or policewoman wants to kill. That’s not why they got into that line of work. I bet those three men who just got life-in-prison sentences wish they’d never shot at that young man jogging in their neighborhood, or better yet, followed the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” and just waved at him.

Remember, one cannot be too careful with guns, for odd unexplained things happen, even with shoes and hats.

 

Roberta George is the founding publisher of Snake Nation Press, a former executive director of the Annette Howell Turner Center for the Arts, a published author and a resident of Valdosta.