Back And To The Left...

When I was a kid, I did a lot of stupid things. Yeah. You know what? I still do stupid things but that's neither here nor there. There was this one time we, the neighborhood kids, got our hands on a professional slingshot.
Yes there is such a thing.
It looked just like the one I posted.
Anyhoo...
We basically spend the day busting out the windows on abandoned tenements and cars.
Hey, if no one lives in the building they are abandoned. And if the car is missing the wheels, ditto.
Eventually we made our way to the roof on account of one of the cars we hit turned out not to have been totally abandoned.
Hey, we felt sorry. Doesn't that count for anything?
So we get up on the roof, which you could do in those days.
I had spent the afternoon plunking the Franklin Avenue Shuttle as it rattled by, brilliant arcs of electricity spilling out as the leads made hard contact with the third rail.
I can still hear that crackling sizzle.
We had all seen The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three. Great movie. That's where I learned about the third rail.
Touching the third rail is bad. For the record.
You could see all of Manhattan in the distance, the World Trade Center easily visible to the East and the lights at Yankee Stadium to the North, past Queens, into the Bronx, cutting a shaft of blue light through the smog. The sun had nearly set and the lights of Manhattan were coming on, more easily visible than the stars. I could see those that actually had jobs in my neighborhood walking home, filing wearily down the platform of the train station to the street.
I could also see this guy walking home from the super market.
He was about a hundred yards out, one bag in each hand. No doubt walking home from a hard day's work, eagerly looking forward to the Jefferson reruns on Channel 11 WPIX.
Oh yeah. Old school TV before the advent of cable television. Back in the day when you siphoned the HBO signal off the Empire State building with a box you could buy down on Graham Avenue in Brooklyn.
Back then, there was no cable in Brooklyn. Fancy things like that belonged in the City, not out in the ghetto.
But I digress.
Seeing the white bags full of groceries in each hand and finding my self holding the slingshot I began to wonder.
"Can I hit those bags from here?"
I was twelve.
I had never heard the term Collateral Damage. That wouldn't show up in the public consciousness for few years.
It was a long shot. Literally.
In the waning afternoon light I found a small stone, not much bigger than a nickel, if that.
It felt about right. Should make the distance easily.
I loaded it into the sling and pulled back as far as my skinny little arms could go.
I could feel the tension of the rubber bands, my arms twitching under the strain as I aimed for the bag in his right hand.
Fwip.
I let go of the rock and the pouch and felt the release.
It was a good shot. I could feel it.
I couldn't see it but I knew I was going to get close.
And then it hit.
Not the bag that I was aiming for.
It hit the man.
His head jerked at the impact of the rock and he set his bags down and grabbed the back of his head.
Holy-
No way.
A part of me was completely amazed that I had hit him. I'm sure that was the part of me where the smile came from. But the rest of me felt horrible.
I wasn't trying to hit him, just the bag. It was a fluke. Never in a million years could I have hit that shot.
He looked around sharply, wonder where the attack had come from but the streets were empty. No one on the stoops, no cars moving.
Eerily quiet for a early summer night in Brooklyn.
He picked up his bags and continued on his way home.
I felt a little sick to my stomach.
And weirdly elated.
No one would believe that shot.
That would be like telling your friends you met Han Solo and Chewbacca at the White House. There are easier ways to get accused of being crackhead but I can't think of any at the moment.
"Great shot kid, that was one in a million!"
Except it wasn't the Death Star.
Just some guy going home.
If he's still out there, I'm sorry. I was a dumb kid and I have never once failed to feel bad that I missed the bag.
Still.
It was a heck of a shot.