Historically I’ve never been all that flagrantly “sporty.” I once managed to successfully fall over and injure myself on a school sports day in the 100 meter hurdles… on the flattest part of the field… right at the beginning of the race... before I even reached the first hurdle. Ahem...
I do not know where my unwavering aversion towards sports first began. Perhaps it’s rooted my synchronized swimming years (I so wish I was kidding right now). But I’m probably not keen on sports because the only physically demanding activity I ever excelled in as a teenager was “falling” - my personal best is 3 storeys.
So in my vocabulary, the terms ‘fun’ and ‘sport’ have only once harmoniously coexisted in the same sentence and that was in the summer of 1993 when I asked my school netball coach, “Can’t we just stop playing this sport now and rather do something fun?” Nevertheless, I recently found myself voluntarily engaging in a sport of sorts. I went Clay Pigeon Shooting. Not because I have a black belt in passive aggression towards birds but because I recently turned thirty and felt a sudden, unexplained urge to shoot things.
So in my vocabulary, the terms ‘fun’ and ‘sport’ have only once harmoniously coexisted in the same sentence and that was in the summer of 1993 when I asked my school netball coach, “Can’t we just stop playing this sport now and rather do something fun?” Nevertheless, I recently found myself voluntarily engaging in a sport of sorts. I went Clay Pigeon Shooting. Not because I have a black belt in passive aggression towards birds but because I recently turned thirty and felt a sudden, unexplained urge to shoot things.
So, armed only with a friend and a Safety Officer named Simon, I strode boldly into a daisy-covered field, feeling faintly ridiculous toting a double-barreled shotgun. Simon explained the basic firing principles, the correct shooting stance, and then quickly assured us that he was just a “safety officer” and definitely NOT to be confused with a qualified “shooting instructor” – something every girl just loves to hear when she’s clutching a substantial loaded weapon for the very first time.
If I’m honest, I was fairly nervous because I was new to guns and was worried I’d fall over from the recoil when I fired the thing (especially with my tendency to fall over in sports). But it was also a little bit scary inasmuch as I was standing within spitting distance of five children, all under the age of seven, who were themselves firing double-barrel shotguns that some idiot had loaded with real bullets! Now I’m not judging, I’m just saying that that’s just got to be a Health and Safety violation something that even Safety Officer Simon couldn’t guarantee would end fatality-free. Now moderate aesthetic damage and/or death is not a good look on me but luckily I was not tense about it; I was just unusually alert in their specific direction the entire time. And while the children enjoyed shooting, the rest of us adults hunkered down to the arduous business of trying to act casual whilst fearing for our very lives and attempting to maintain an acceptable level of bladder control.
After the kids ran out of bullets and we all climbed out of our hiding places, it turned out that I wasn’t totally rubbish at it. Now I’m not one to toot my own horn of superior marksmanship, but I will say that I hit the very first two clay pigeons. I then missed the following fourteen, but that is so not the point. The point is that there should be stricter gun control for minors and anyone within shooting distance of me!
I had 50 bullets to fire because this was the minimum amount of bullets medically required to guarantee that the shotgun recoil would completely dislocate my left shoulder. Safety Officer Simon told us that the guns we were using had “minimal recoil”. Sure it did; for a cannon. By mistake, I once fired two shots in a row and the double recoil threw me backwards right off my feet. But since Safety Officer Simon caught me, I don’t think that could be classified as a legal sporting “fall”. So I’m notching this one up as an overall adult sporting victory.
Comments
Post a Comment