Raymond - sorry dude!

I've always found it interesting what memories stay etched in your mind for your entire life. Here's one of mine:

Back in 1958 (when I was 5 years old) I lived on Antonia Drive in a quiet suburb of St. Louis. One day Raymond Sudheimer (my best friend) and I were in his basement playing with dart guns. Now, these guns were not like the modern day 'ultra-safe' ones (the result of decades of tort liability). The 'old school' ones fired hard plastic missiles at a sufficient velocity to actually break stuff (much more fun than the modern day equivalents, I might add).

So I was playing gun fighter and fired off a shot at Ray from a distance of 4 feet. To my dismay and horror, he screamed and covered his (right?) eye. His mother came running down the stairs and he ended up being rushed to the doctor. Although he had to wear an eye patch for a number of weeks there was (luckily) no permanent loss of vision.

Everyone spent the next few days yelling at me that I should have known better than to point a dart gun at somebody's face. I told them that I DID know better and I was aiming for his chest. NOBODY (not even my parents) believed me. And what hurt the most was that Ray's Mom wouldn't let me see him for the longest time afterward and things were never the same between us.

You know, it's been over 50 years but I remember it like it was yesterday. I WAS aiming for his chest when I pulled the trigger (yeah, I knew it might hurt a bit but I figured he'd get even with me pretty quick...) and I was absolutely stunned when he screamed. I couldn't BELIEVE I missed that badly from that close.

I moved away in 1961 and although I saw Ray once again for a few minutes (passing through in 1974) I didn't think to apologize. So Ray, if you ever trip across your name in this blog: I've NEVER stopped being sorry about what happened...

BTW - Among my less relevant memories are Ray's cool sandbox, the fire in his doghouse (when only the mother and one puppy survived), working on a model of a 1940 Ford together, and his Dad's 1950 or 51 black Ford Custom and Snapper lawnmower...