[davidkachel]

OK, gather 'round kiddies.

It was about 1965 give or take a year. My childhood friend R whose family lived in a single story 21 room ranch house in AZ was in his mid-teens and rather relaxed about what he left where and when. How one of us didn't end up dead is still a mystery to me.

At one end of the house was the expansive kitchen while R's bedroom was at the other end. One day R left his pristine Nazi proofed .32 PPK sitting on the kitchen counter while he went off to do something else. He forgot it was there and went to bed.

R had a younger brother who of course had lots of toys, among them toy guns. Cleaning up before going to bed, R's mother saw the PPK and assumed it was one of the brother's toys. She picked it up to put it away and BANG, a round went through a closet wall, the metal hose of the vacuum cleaner contained therein and lodged in the opposite wall of the closet. This startled her so much she jumped, flailed her arms and BANG, discharged another round in a direction roughly parallel with the more or less linear kitchen. Back to this in a moment...

R's mother being more than a little startled and angry and utterly unfamiliar with this weapon or any similar weapons, ran through the considerable length of the house with the loaded, cocked and off-safe PPK in hand and woke R, shaking him, pointing the PPK directly at his face and shouting "R, R, how do you turn this thing off?"!!! R awoke staring down the barrel of said PPK and into the face of his understandably upset mother. He carefully eased the weapon out of her hand and then submitted to a well-deserved tongue lashing.

The following morning we dug bullet #1 out of the closet and duct-taped the through-and-through in the vacuum cleaner, which went on to lead a lengthy life of service, despite some debilitating respiratory problems. Then we set about searching for bullet #2.

Despite several kitchen dismemberments, bullet #2 evaded us for 40+ years. No hole, no track, no dents, no dings, no damage of any kind was located. It was as if the bullet had simply evaporated in mid-flight. Over the years we talked often about "the bullet" and the fact that it should have been found long ago. Finally, just a few years ago after it had been decided to remodel the kitchen, a workman came to R one day with a concerned and somewhat puzzled look on his face and "the bullet" between his fingers. R looked at the oxidized but intact .32 ACP bullet and immediately knew exactly what it was.

It seems that second shot had somehow managed to strike the interior of an open drawer in such a way that it was "guided" to the back of the cabinet and the kind of damage one would expect to find and then follow to the location of the bullet, did not exist. Whether it glided along a drawer rail or followed some sort of seam, we don't know for sure. At any rate the only evidence in existence of Ma's attempt on the life of the toaster is now in my possession. Her successful murder of the vacuum cleaner (it finally succumbed to its wounds years later) is still awaiting trial.