When I was about 7 or 8 I got a single shot .22LR. One day I got the bright idea of trying to capture one of the bullets for examination after impact. My first subject was a small oak tree behind the house. I loaded and then carefully pointed my rifle about 2 inches from the tree and gently squeezed the trigger.
It was like everything went into slow motion with a distorted echo like you see in the movies. The bang of the rifle and simultaniously a sharp pain in my stomach and then slowly zooming back into realtime. I stumbled backwards several steps while slumping to the ground.
I suddenly realised what I had done. In my stupidity I had shot myself with my own gun. The bullet had ricochetted off the tree and hit me! I began to shake. I felt cold and wanted to vomit. My heart raced 90MPH. Slowly, I reached up with my hand and felt the wound. I looked down at my hand and it was covered in nothing.
Huh?
There was no blood, not a drop. I looked at my stomach... no guts hanging out, no blood spurting, nothing. No life flashing in front of my eyes, zip, nada, zilch. I pulled up my shirt and all I saw was a bright red spot above my belly button.
What happened was a piece of bark had flown off the tree and hit me. It didn't have enough velocity to penetrate, but it had enough to leave a good sting and a dose of reality. That brought a halt to my ballistics experiments for a while.
