Do you ever listen to and watch the commercials that are on television and the radio? I do. I recognize the stupid Sonic ads. I enjoy the sappy Hallmark card spots. I admire the graceful PSAs (Public Service Announcements). I just saw one for the first time.

A man is rushing into his house while on his phone. He is speaking with his wife. The shot shows him pulling open a drawer on a bedside table. “The gun is not here.” The camera returns to run down the hall and stops at a bedroom door where he is calling his son’s name. The CGA on the screen is about suicide. It closes by saying that there is no extra life. The terror in the man’s voice seems natural.

One of the chapters in “Doulos” is titled “The Shooting.” “Doulos” is the memoir that I finished about eight years ago. That chapter is about an accidental shooting that happened in February of 1966. Here is the story.

Mom woke us up that Saturday morning and we drove to Marshfield to visit with Aunt Nina, Uncle Paul, and the cousins. The snow was drifting across route 66 through Strafford and Northview. The farm was beautiful with snow everywhere. It did not stop us from making the trip.

I had asked to be left home that day. Mom said we were all going and that I would enjoy it when we got there. She was correct. Climbing out of the car I ran into the farmhouse with everyone else. I was ready to go for a walk through the fields looking for rabbits in the snow. My cousin Dennis grabbed a shotgun, and we headed out the backdoor and through the gate.

We walked and talked watching the ground. No one had a watch. We had no idea how long we had been gone or how far it was to get back to the house. We were standing in a circle. My two brothers, Dennis, and me. I was direct across from my cousin. The gun was pointed at an angle toward the ground.

We heard a boom. I sat down on the ground. Dennis ran to me. He looked at my left leg. The firearm was given to my brother Bud. Kenny was sent running back to where our parents were. Dennis picked the wadding from the shotgun shell off the leg of my jeans. “You were just hit by the wadding.” He picked me up and took me to the milk barn. Buddy followed us.

I was sat down on the milk cooler and was told I had been shot. I knew that already. I could not stand on my left leg. It was numb. There was no blood. He carried me into the living room of the house. Mine and Dennis’ parents began to fuss over me. The look on my mom’s face came to my mind when I heard that voice on the TV this morning.

An ambulance had been requested. I was taken to Burge hospital in Springfield, Missouri. You know it as Cox North. My leg was X-rayed, and the prognosis was that I would heal with pellets still in my leg and the two in my knee could be removed if they caused any pain.

Today I have pellets in the calf of my leg. The two in my knee were removed in December of 1966. Many of the buckshot came out over the years. I was able to pop them out one at a time for the first few years. It was interesting to watch the reaction of friends when I did that.

Life has been much the same as it would have been without the shooting. I remember a man that worked at Cox that told my mother that first night that if the angle of the barrel had been two degrees higher and two feet farther away, I would have been hit in the abdomen and would not have survived. That is why this commercial caused me to want to share my story again.

©Copyright 2022 by Charles Kensinger