Glad it was worth reading. And my mom, were she still with us, would likely comment, with a wry smile on her face, that the only way I ended up being a good example for young kids was by putting a 9mm home through my own ankle.
I'm not sure why you'd say that. The bullet is designed to penetrate hard barriers AND cause massive soft tissue wound channels. I shot myself in a part of my body with NO soft tissue, so the bullet did exactly what it's designed to do and went straight through two large bones, fracturing them At their juncture as it exited. If the bullet had hit me in the abdomen, chest, or even a leg, I have no doubt it would have created the kind of massive wound cavity it's been proven to create in ballistic gelatin tests. It's maybe the only round that has proven to have almost identical levels of penetration and massive wound channel creation over multiple rounds fired and met the FBI standards while doing so. Just don't shoot yourself with it and you'll be fine.
Ow. I didn't lose anything except my pride.
I hated annual qualifying in the Air Force. I always ended up on the range with people who I KNOW had never handled a gun before in their lives. It was the only time I wished I'd joined the Army or the Marines where the people at least would know which end of the AR to point at the target.
That's a great story. I didn't have kids in my first marriage, luckily I think given who their mom would have been. But when I married Ruth, my wife now, I inherited her three kids, ages 10, 12, and 14. My friends loved Ruth, but thought I had seriously lost my mind, since this was only a little over a year after a pretty traumatic divorce. Well, that was 22 years ago. My three step kids were maybe the best thing life ever gave me except for my wife, who married me knowing that I had zero experience with kids. I've had the great privilege of watching them grow into exceptional men and women and start their own careers and families. My two grandkids, 8 and 2, are the light of our lives. Even a disaster like that can have some benefit later on. Thanks for sharing. That made my day.
Oh, and I crushed my foot too - had to be surgically reconstructed - had pins coming out of it (grossed out the ladies at the office when I went back to work after a week off), 6 weeks on crutches, several more months walking with a cane, took a year where I was walking without pain. To this day, 23+ years later, it still hurts a bit, especially if I bang it into something.
When some punk shows off their tattoos, all proud and everything, I say "that's nothing" and show them my $7000 'tattoos' on my foot as proof that I can be supremely stupid too.
