There is a thing that hillbillies and boyscouts do sometimes when
they want to up the ante in gun shooting called and egg shoot. The
idea is that you get one shot to shoot an egg and if you miss you
have to eat the egg raw. Mayhaps the idea was that salmonella would
teach all the bad shots to improve or to quit shooting or die. We
were each issued an egg and a bullet and we put the egg on special
stands about 150' away. Then we all walked back to the shooting range
pavilion where the range master made us do a bunch of safety bull
crap like put on goggles. He made us check our gun, he made us make
sure they were on safety, he made us clear the chamber, he made us
all check that there was no one down field. In our troop we were all
experienced shooters of a less safe ilk and we were getting antsy
with all his safety blah blah. We were finally allowed to chamber our
single round and then we had to wait for him to let us take the gun
off safe and then we had to wait for him to tell us to aim and then
we could shoot. Of the twelve of us only two missed, another boy and
I. We had to back step slowly down safety mountain and when we were
all safe and secured we went to get our eggs which I was going to
have to eat whole and raw and I was not scared a bit about. I thought
for some reason that it would be a breeze and I would eat it and then
do something funny and get a laugh in the bargain. I did get a laugh.
I brought my egg up to the youth leader who was going to act as
eggsecutioner and tilted my head back to quick swallow the whole
thing in one go. That was the plan. That plan sucked. He cracked the
egg and plopped the whole slimy mass in at once and any notion I had
that I could just give it the old one swallow evaporated. I sputtered
and gagged and tried two or three time to swallow but my body had
made an super-executive decision and just puked instead. Like I said
I got my laugh but I may have lost a tiny bit of dignity in the mix
hard to say though some of those boys could have been impressed by my
physical inability to ingest a whole egg and my determined vomiting,
I never asked.
