When my grandfather, known to everyone except his mother and my grandmother as Geechie, was a young man he was CONSTANTLY getting himself in sticky situations. He was adventurous to put it kindly and a bit of a stinker. He kept his mama, my Ranny, on her toes to say the very least.
One evening while his parents were out he went into their room and dug his daddy’s revolver out of its hiding place. Probably in a drawer somewhere as gun safety wasn’t as popular then as it is now. Knowing better than to play with a loaded gun he emptied the bullets on his bedside table and proceeded to pretend he was a cowboy. At this point in his story I always pictured him standing in front of the mirror with the gun held loosely in his hand by his thigh saying ” why you yellow belly, lily livered…”
Apparently whatever game he was playing must have gotten old because he placed the bullets back in their chambers and set the gun down on his night stand meaning to return it to his parents room before they came home. Time passed and he was sitting on his bed, his long lanky frame leaning back against the wall, when impulsively he picked up the gun in his best quick draw imitation and fired at his bedroom door! Having completely forgotten he had replaced the bullets, the gun went off and a bullet shot out of the barrel and lodged itself in the back of his bedroom door.
I’m sure he was scared half to death, if not from the gunshot itself then from the images that played through his head of what his parents were going to do when he got home. Being the resourceful boy that he was he quickly got to work trying to cover up his misdeed. He ran and grabbed some white paint and after jamming his chewing gum into the hole he painted the area and replaced the gun in his parents room.
The house still belongs to our family and both chewing gum and bullet remain in that door to this day. He actually told me this story when I was a young girl while showing me the door and I remembering running my finger over the spot and feeling the rubber chewing gum beneath the paint.
And to my knowledge his mother did not find out until much, much later. 🙂