Remembering the time I got shot by a guy shooting at an outhouse

So, did you ever hear about the time I got shot by these guys target shooting at an outhouse? FYI – No, I wasn’t in the outhouse at the time…LOL. (It’s OK to laugh. I do. Well, I do now anyway.)

Mark White is Editor of The News Journal.

Saturday will mark the 40^th anniversary of the occasion.

The day was July 1. I was 12 years old and had just finished playing in what would turn out to be my last baseball game. I had just broken out of a long hitting slump with a double and beat out a bunt at first base for a single.

I was in the car with my mom and we were on our way to pick up my sister at a friend’s house in Gray. We were driving by the road to our house and I asked my mom to stop and let me out.

“It won’t hurt you to go,” she responded. The was the last time I listened to her, I often joked.

We got to the house in Gray and I got out of the car and was walking around in the yard while mom went inside to talk. I heard some bangs but given that it was July 1, I just figured it was somebody setting off some fireworks and I didn’t think anything about it.

BAM! The next thing I knew I am falling to the ground.

As it turned out, a guy and his son were target shooting at an old outhouse about a block and one-half away with a .22 rifle and one of the bullets ricocheted and hit me in the right leg in the upper thigh.

For the first few seconds I thought maybe a bottle rocket or something had hit me, but it didn’t take me long to realize that I had been shot. Survival instincts kicked in and I started looking around to see if I could see the shooter, which I couldn’t.

You know how in the movies things seem to go into slow motion for people after they get shot? This is what happened to me.

My sister and her friend saw what happened and ran inside to get help.

I was rolling around on the ground in pain. It seemed like 20 minutes before anyone came out of the house, but in reality it was probably closer to 20 seconds.

My mom was freaking out and at one point sat on me. (I never was sure why. I don’t think she knew either.)

My dad, who was at work at the time, didn’t initially know where the shooting had taken place, and just assumed that it happened at my ballgame. He thought that maybe someone had gone nuts and literally tried to kill the umpire and I got shot by mistake.

After what seemed like an eternity, an ambulance showed up and took me to the old Corbin hospital where I would stay for the next five days.

After that, I was on crutches for about two months.

I still have the slug in the middle of my leg, in case anyone is wondering. Surprisingly, it doesn’t set off metal detectors. The doctor told me about 40 years ago that it would be a major surgery to have it removed, and that contrary to what you see on MASH, if a bullet isn’t in a vital place, the doctors often just leave it.

The two guys, who were shooting, were a man and his son. The son had played baseball in high school for my dad, who was his coach. My parents didn’t press any charges in case anyone is wondering. I think that was the right decision.

A few years later, dad and I ended up playing golf with the son a few times. He apologized. I think he was almost as scared that day as I was that day.

In some ways, I was as lucky the day I got shot as I was unlucky. If the bullet had been a couple of inches higher, then I would have been paralyzed.

There are some common questions I get when people find out that I have been shot before.

Does it still hurt?

Some times, but probably not in the way you might imagine. If I am standing for an extended period of time, then my leg will start getting this cold, numb kind of feeling that is painful. It’s nerve pain. When this happens, it gets more painful the longer I stand.

The only thing I can do at that point is sit down and get off my feet for three or four minutes. Then, the pain goes away. I get back on my feet and the cycle starts over again if I am standing for a long period of time, like at a ballgame, at a museum, or something like that.

Do I get nervous if I hear loud sounds or being around guns?

While I jumped hearing loud sounds for probably a couple of years after I got shot, I don’t anymore. Being around guns never bothered me before or after this happened. The gun wasn’t the problem. It was the people using it.

There are lessons to be learned from this story.

When target shooting, know where your bullets are going.

Also, be careful around outhouses in general…LOL.