My best friend in the whole world was Robert Waters. One day I found some .22 shells in my Dad’s truck. Of course I took them, but I was “smart” I only took a few so that Dad would not notice that any were missing. (Do you really think that I got away with that one?) At Robert’s house we took the shells and were playing with them. We often would take caps and hit them with a hammer they would pop. If we hit a whole roll of the caps instead of just one at a time it would really make a nice bang. So with this in mind our thoughts naturally went to our 22 shells. After spending a little time experimenting we found that if we laid the shell on it’s side on the sidewalk and lightly hit with a hammer that it would go off making a much bigger bang than caps would. I had no concept that it was as dangerous as it actually was. We thought that as long as we “aimed” the shell away from us nothing bad would happen. And as long as I was there nothing did happen. The problem was that later that day Robert got into his Dad’s shells and took some so that they could continue to play. They were hitting the shells with a hammer and the bullet bounced off of a rock and hit his brother in the shin. It did not hurt him badly but…. Later that night my Dad had a sever talk with me. In retrospect I am surprised that we lived to see the sun come up the next morning.