A friend once told me how she and a friend were playing with a pistol when it went off and fired a bullet into a dresser. I'm one up on her in terms of random acts of stupidity. I once shot my beloved cornet with a 20-guage shotgun, putting a hole through the bell that would accommodate all of my fingers and blowing a flap of brass back inside that acted like a mute. I was sitting on my bed with just a throw rug between me and my brother's bed. Anthony was sitting on the end of his bed about to blow into his trombone when the gun went off. He looked at his horn awestruck as if he had made that sound.

My mother called from the next room, "Was that a gun?" I jumped up and shouted, "I shot my horn! I shot my horn!" Later I found out that the shotgun had a homemade firing pin made from a finishing nail. Of course, I never should have had a loaded gun in the house anyway. The blasted bell was hung on the wall of the instrument repairman's shop and was still there 20 years later when he sold his business and tools to an associate of mine.

I haven't told that story in print yet! Aren't we both lucky that one of us wasn't killed?

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