When I was six or seven years old, we went to a family reunion. It was in some sort of outdoor park or campground. My cousin Christopher and I went to the playground. I think it was just him and me but maybe my sister remembers some of this. Although at the time, she would have been four or five. We were walking around the sandy jungle gyms and swings and came to the teeter-tottors. While playing and lifting one end up, we found a gun.

I was nervous and didn’t want to touch it and said that we should go and get our parents. He said “no” and that “it wasn’t real anyway”. He picked it up and was sighting things like trees, playground equipment and then me. He pointed the gun to the center of my chest, with his free hand out using his thumb as a guide. He was five feet away. I told him to stop it, and not to point it at me.

He turned forty five degrees to me with the same posture, hand out, eye squinted and pulled the trigger. A shot rang out but I don’t remember much else. Christopher had shot himself in the thumb that he was using to sight.

I remember running back to the party screaming and then sitting in someone’s RV where some women relatives had a bunch of towels and a pot of water. They were washing all the blood off of my face and arms. My teeth were chattering and I couldn’t stop shaking. My mom kept repeating “there’s so much blood”. They took Chris to the hospital. I don’t know what happened to his thumb. I also remember that all the men got together in some sort of lynch mob looking for the jackass who put the gun under a teeter-totter in a kids playground. They didn’t have any success.

I hadn’t thought about that story in years. When we were in Malibu Andy, Vlad and I were talking about some sort of family get togethers, and that story came to the front of my mind. Now, after not really thinking about it for years, it’s come into my mind a few times a week since then, making me queasy every time.

I’m hoping that putting it on the page will purge it free from this cycle.