So the year was 2000, and I was at the ripe young age of 13. Over the Christmas school holidays my dad, a fencing contractor by trade, enlisted the help of myself and my brothers to assist him on a job. This fence was along a main road and was the boundary to a large housing estate. So we were working away, lining up pailings etc. and my dad said we could have a go with his nail gun. He showed us that you need to push it hard against a surface for a nail to be released, and we thought that was the most awesome thing since Tazos, or when Oreos made their way to us via a friend going to USA. Anyway, Dad seemed to like the way that it had transformed us from squabbling to overjoyed in mere seconds, and decided to show us another trick. He chocked a bit of wood or something in near the nozzle so that the nail gun "thought" it was pressed against something at all times, thus allowing you to fire it like a gun.
He started shooting it at the dirt and we were all backing away laughing. He then started shooting it near my little brothers feet (he was 10 at the time) going "dance, dance!" maniacally. You think I am joking.. but my dad really does that shit. My little bro Daniel was squealing in a mixture of fear and excitement, then started to run away from us. He was running over a slight hill, and my dad kept shooting the ground a few meters behind him. As Daniel was slowly going up-hill dad had raised the nail gun more and more after him. When he started on the decline, he turned around to look at us and my dad shot again but had the gun raised too high. All we saw was him laughing and waving - then he clutched his eye and fell to the ground screaming.
I don't think i have ever been so close to actually shitting myself. We ran up to him expecting the worst, and finally we pried his hand away from his face, and saw that the nail was not sticking out of his eyeball as feared... it was nowhere to be seen. all he had was a little nick under his eye and a bit of blood. We all breathed a sigh of relief but i don't think I have ever seen my dad so worried. He swore Daniel not to tell my mum what happened or else she would probably leave him or something.
Now, Daniel is definately not the most subtle of people... i think somehow he wanted my mum to find out. When we got home she asked what happened to his eye and he explained "i um, tripped on a rock.... and fell onto another rock...." which she miraculously believed. Obviously he would have to try harder to let mum "find out", so he started drawing pictures of the incident and leaving them around the house. Here is a fairly accurate one that i remember...
(In hindsight, i probably shouldn't have done a backwards "e" as he was 10 at the time, which i calculated after creating this masterpeice in Paint.)
Anyway, Mum still didn't realise what was going on, and Dad was thinking it was just a matter of time before Daniel wrecked the whole arrangement. So around the table at Christmas Lunch my dad told my mum he had to confess something, and told her the whole story. What an awkward finish to a lovely day THAT was :s
So yeah, Daniel is the accident-prone one in the family. I don't think he has done any damage lately but he used to hurt himself in horrific ways all the time. There was the time he stepped on a piece of roof guttering that was up the side of our house, and it sliced deep in between his big and second toe. There was a trail of blood to the back door and everyone was freaking the fuck out. Then there was the time he cut his calf on a bit of sharp wood and his skin kind of folded back from the cut exposing the fat layer. It was like on star wars when Han Solo cuts open the Tauntaun's stomach and all that shit spills out. He was asking me to get mum and i was yelling "no! I'm having too much fun atop the spinning clothes line" that was until i saw WHY he wanted me to get mum and i nearly vommed. Anyway, enough of that. It is lunch-time and i don't want to lose my appetite :P
having brothers must be fun when its not awful
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