Open Season on a Rush Boy

Outsized would have described my Uncle Sam, Irene’s husband.  He had an outsized personality, and he was prone to tell outsized tales of questionable veracity. He was physically a big man. I do not know what his height was, but he always seemed taller than my 187 centimeters. He was a man who loved eat, and his weight showed it. He was just a big man.

Although I never thought about them, he had one physical characteristic that apparently bothered him. It was his ears. They did not quite stick out 90 degrees from his head, but they were definitely more of an obtuse angle than the usual acute.

My cousin Perry inherited his ears. When Perry was 12, he had plastic surgery to go from obtuse to angular in the pinna department. Shortly after the operation he and his mother, my aunt, were visiting at our Grandmother’s house.

We were both trying to pass through the front screen door of my grandmother’s old house simultaneously. Somehow, someway, I bumped one of his new angular ears that were still very much bandaged from the surgery. For all the coral on the Great Barrier Reef I would not have done this on purpose.

I do not know if it was from pain. If it was from worrying that I may have ruined the surgery. Or perhaps some other reason, but Perry thought I had done it on purpose. He was madder than an OU fan after Texas ruining a perfect season. He shouted as he was running off, “I’m going to kill you.” Of course, I took his being mad seriously, but the threatened annihilation I thought to be anger’s exuberance. At least that is what I thought, until he returned carrying his .22 rifle.

Seeing a mad Texan with a rifle in his hand I made the not so hasty decision that maybe I should vacate the immediate vicinity. What probably saved my young self was that it was a single shot .22 and not loaded. I jumped off Mama Carr’s porch and beginning running for cover around the back of the house. Perry was in hot pursuit trying to put Barney’s bullet in his rifle and get a shot off. Having watched way too many Westerns at that point in my life, I knew I should be zig-zagging to give him the least opportunity for a clean shot.

Mothers being mothers, my mother and Aunt Irene had heard all the commotion and realized that Perry was chasing me with a rifle in his hand intent on doing me bodily harm. Now there were four people running around my grandmother’s rather large old house. I was in the lead running for all I had in me, changing direction like a Dallas running back. Perry was behind me screaming that he was going to kill me as he attempted to load his rifle. Finally, there were my mother and my aunt at the rear giving chase to Perry.  Running was not something either woman was used to doing.  They were adding to the din their screams for Perry to stop. Fortunately, for both of us, Aunt Irene caught Perry and took the rifle from him.

I sure there were consequences, but I do not remember what they were.

Sorry Perry, it really was an accident that I bumped into your new ear.