Will Dabbs, MD, writes about an early experience in The
American Handgunner.
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What exactly does it mean to be cool? Though difficult to
define, you know it when you see it. Guns are cool. So was Steve McQueen. You
get kind of a gestalt about such stuff.
Some of us spend our entire lives striving mightily to be
cool yet fail quite to get there. However, many’s the young man’s unscheduled
trip across the river Styx ’twas precipitated by a poorly reasoned effort to be
cool.
The Perfect Day
It was one of those torrid Mississippi summer afternoons
when the sun burned like a furnace and the air was so humid you could rip off a
chunk and gnaw it. School was out; I had not a care in the world.
In my day you got your driver’s license at 15. I wouldn’t
trust today’s 15-year-old males unsupervised with gum, much less an automobile.
However, this was a different time.
While I have indeed never been mistaken for cool, my dad did
see to it I rolled in a cool car. A young man’s ride is so much more than
transportation. It is style, personality, character and status all packaged up
on four spinning wheels. My car was pure unfiltered awesome.
The year was 1981 and the car was a 1970 Buick Skylark
convertible. The sole ragtop in my small Mississippi Delta community, it was
metallic blue and immensely, nay ludicrously, powerful. I would frequently go
sit in the back seat and read science fiction tomes with the top down while
parked in the driveway. As I said, being cool was more a journey than a
destination with me.
On this particular day I was sporting cheap, mirrored
aviator shades while tearing down a preternaturally straight stretch of Lee
Drive, so named for the esteemed General. Like all adolescent males I was
young, bulletproof and immortal. Harm could never befall me.
The Power Of Stupid
Overcome by the moment, I pushed myself up such that I was
sitting atop the headrest. A gangly, long-legged lad, I manipulated the
accelerator with my right great toe and kept the wheel nominally managed with
my fingertips. My face was fully in the slipstream above the windshield.
Seatbelts were not the religious
sacraments they are today, so mine were tucked down out of the way behind the seat
so as not to interfere with my signature dynamic entry into the vehicle —
vaulting over the door to land gracefully in the driver’s seat, ready to rock. During
such a maneuver, one does not desire the painful inconvenience of seatbelt
buckles. As a result, I perched atop my charging metallic blue steed, restrained
not one whit.
My nemesis lurked anonymously within the tall Johnson grass that lined the
rural road, happily munching his mid-afternoon snack. Whether driven by
boredom, hunger, or love will never now be known, but he did for some reason
then spontaneously take flight. Spreading his broad green wings, this massive
4" Delta grasshopper flexed his powerful legs and leapt into the ether.
I perceived a scant flurry in the periphery of my vision and
my entire world exploded. The gargantuan insect caught me squarely in the
forehead and detonated like an antitank grenade, knocking me bodily back into
the rear seat and leaving my legs draped limply astride the headrest. At this
point my trusty Skylark was still making some 70 miles per hour, though now
charging randomly sans pilot.
I clawed violently back over the seat and dropped in behind
the steering wheel again, seizing the appendage in an involuntary rictus. By
some miracle throughout it all the car remained within the two white lines of
its own accord. No doubt the vehicle was guided solely by my guardian angel,
himself a both overworked and underappreciated spook.
Denouement
I carefully coasted to a stop on the side of the deserted
road and took stock. My sunglasses were gone, never to be seen again. A not
insubstantial gash tracked rakishly across my forehead, now most liberally
adorned with splintered chunks of chitin and copious pureed pest. I wiped away
the gore with an oily towel and puttered meekly back home.
I crept stealthily into the house and retired to the
bathroom to attend my wounds. My dad inquired concerning my injuries over
dinner, and I not untruthfully explained I had been struck by a grasshopper
while out driving with the top down. All involved thought it comical.
The truth has remained suppressed to this very day, and now,
my friends, I share it with you.
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