I’ve just read about the shooting tragedy involving Alec Baldwin. My heart aches for him and for the victims. The same thing almost happened to me when I was in a play in high school.

 

I was in a play called THE WALL TO WALL WAR. One day before the teacher showed up to start rehearsals, one of the cast members took the gun, loaded a blank into it, and was waiting for the teacher to arrive so he could pretend to want to kill himself by shooting himself in the head, not knowing that a blank, fired at close range, can kill … and would surely have killed him had he placed it against his temple.

 

But because the teacher didn’t arrive as soon as we expected, this young man decided he would shoot someone else. And that someone was me.

 

He walked up behind me, put the gun up against my back, and fired.

 

I crumpled to the ground. My back felt like it was on fire.

 

At first, the kid thought I was just acting.  He laughed.  I stood up and showed him where the shot had burned a hole completely through my clothing (a very thick, plaid lumberjack-type shirt: I remember it well!). He paled and gasped. “Are you all right?!”

 

Although my back burned like mad, I assured him I was because he looked so stricken.  Then he said, “I was planning to shoot myself in the head as a joke when the teacher came in!”

 

I felt sick to my stomach just thinking of that. I had saved his freaking life, quite by “accident”! (And thankfully, he hadn’t aimed at my head instead!)

 

Of course, we told the teacher about the shooting when he finally arrived and that’s when he realized he should have explained that a blank could be every bit as deadly as a bullet, close up.

 

I went home that night and caught Mom in the kitchen. I told her, “I got shot tonight.”  She looked at me quizzically and I said, “I’m serious. Look!” I turned around and showed her the hole that was burned into my shirt. Then I took off my shirt and showed her my back. It was a mess: red and angry-looking with black powder-type marks arrayed around it.

 

And here was yet another thing to be grateful for: he hadn’t put the muzzle of the gun against my spine, or I could have been paralyzed by it. It was very close to my spine, but not on it.

 

It ached for three or four months afterward.

 

The young man who pulled the trigger had already had one gun-related tragedy in his family. His father was getting set to shoot something that was just past their barn when another young man came running around the corner just as he fired. The bullet killed him.

 

Guns are deadly, loaded with bullets or blanks. The force that ejects the  bullet or blank is the culprit. It’s a directional explosion.

 

I’m feeling every bit of the anguish that Alec Baldwin must be feeling today. Tragedies like this happen because people aren’t informed about the potential deadliness of props.

 

It breaks my heart…