Freewrite 19 May 2007

Today I would like to tell a story. Not about a man named Brady but about one time when I thought I was going to die. I was 18 at the time and was the director of the archery range at Camp little Lemhi, a Boy Scout camp in eastern Idaho next to the Palisades reservoir and the Snake River. I used to tell the scouts the worst thing they could do was dry fire the bows. (That means you shoot a bow without an arrow in it and if it does not kill you it may very possibly kill the next guy.) Well one day I learned there was one other thing that would make me even angrier. I was downrange behind the tarp that the boys were shooting at looking for an arrow. I had told them to stop shooting and done the whole safety thing then all of a sudden I heard this loud TWANG! “Oh no” I thought, “do I stay behind the tarp and hope that an arrow does not come through or do I go around and hope an arrow does not hit me there?” I decided to yell and boy did I yell, “Who shot that arrow?!” I could hear the silence fall over the range. As I then walked around the tarp I yelled aging in the best mean voice I could muster, “Who shot that arrow!?” everyone looked at the culprit and with a timid voice he replied, “I did not shoot an arrow I dry fired the bow.” Well to make a long story short he was fairly retentive so I only kicked him off the range for a few minutes. However that day I was extremely grateful that I did not end up with an arrow through my skull.