The Time I Was Almost Killed
In this article I want to tell you about the time I was almost killed
You’re going to be able to judge for yourself whether you think I would’ve been killed or not after you read the entire story.
Let me set the stage…
I was the youngest of four growing up in a South Philadelphia Italian family. Don’t get the wrong idea. No one in my immediate family spoke broken English or anything like that. My mother and father certainly were not the “stereo-typical” Italian-Americans. Aside from “gravy” (most people call it sauce) and pasta on Sundays and the traditional Christmas Eve menu of fish my parents were your “normal” hard-working American family.
They do say that Italian mothers tend to want to spoil their sons and this I’d have to agree with. Here’s what I mean…
I didn’t move out of my Parents’ house until I got married at age twenty-four. I lived in my own apartment for a little while when I was twenty-one and then returned home. After all, my parents didn’t tell me to take a hike. They actually encouraged me to come back and stay. It made sense to me since most of the time I was working anyway. I slept there most nights of course, but other than that, I spent most of my days and nights out of the house.
In addition to me living at home, my older brother closest to me in age also lived there. My bedroom was on the third floor, right- front side of my parents’ South Philly Town-House. My brother’s room was right next to mine separated by a sheet-rocked wall. My bed was right up against the dividing wall.
I met Jamie, my wife, in 2002. We started dating seriously in the late summer of 2003.
She lived in a small town in Northern New Jersey about twenty minutes outside of New York City. Talk about stereo typical: When we’d go out to dinner to the local Italian restaurants I had my eyes pealed for Tony Saprano! We would rotate weekends. Jamie would drive to Philly one weekend and I’d drive to North Jersey the other.
I usually left her place to return home on Sunday night. It was around 10PM when I returned that Sunday. When I walked in the house my brother looked at me and said: “Now, Mike don’t get upset.” “What’s the matter?” I asked. “As I was cleaning my gun this morning it accidentally went off.” (If you knew my brother you’d be in favor of tougher gun control laws.) “Who got shot and why didn’t anyone call me?” I said in a panicked voice. “No one.” he said. “Well?” I said. He replied; “The bullet went through the bedroom wall and landed in your pillow Mike.” My response: “So let me get this straight. You were tinkering with your new gun, it went off and the bullet landed in my pillow. So if I had been in there I would have been killed!” He said: “Let’s just be glad you were not in your bed at the time.” “Hell yeah!” I said.
So it makes you wonder…
If I had been in the bed would I have been killed? Odds are pretty good I would have been. If not killed, hurt for sure. But then again, maybe the bullet would have missed me. No way to tell of course.
But then you wonder more…
You might wonder about the decisions we make and how they impact our futures. Good decisions we have consciously made, bad decisions we have consciously made. And decisions we really intended to be good, but did not turn out so well.
Was the decision to pursue a relationship with Jamie reason I was not in my own bedroom that Sunday morning? Or was it simply the decision to head up to North Jersey that particular weekend? I know if Jamie and I had not been dating there was a pretty good chance I’d have been out late partying the night before and would have been sound asleep at 11AM when the gun was accidentally fired through the wall.
What’s even more important…
I really never put that story in writing so it was kind of fun. I hope you enjoyed! But what’s more important is to track the positive decisions you make and actions you take toward your goals and ultimately where they lead you.
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