Sir Bob Jones
No Punches Pulled
David Farrar runs one of our most popular blog-sites, Kiwiblog.
Farrar, a market economy liberal had a rude awakening recently about the narrow-minded bigotry of some of his readers.
This followed the attempted assassination of Trump after it was clear he’d had a miraculous escape with a tiny skin wound, as would have happened to at least a million Americans that day. Kids scraping their knees and such-like, requiring as with Trump, a plaster for a few days.
In the immediate aftermath before anything had been revealed about his attempted assassin, David jokingly suggested the culprit was likely to be Trump’s current wife Melania. Given her clear (and understandable) aversion to be seen with Trump, it was a harmless amusing joke.
But then I suspect Farrar had a shock awakening about the stupidity of some of his readers for he was besieged with attacks for bad taste. Had Trump been killed or seriously injured, only then would those claims have had validity.
Days later with his usual lies Trump bragged how he’d taken a bullet for democracy. In fact other than a miraculously minor skin scratch, the bullet had missed him and instead killed a poor bugger sitting behind him.
The point I’m making is when it’s harmless to make jokes about alarming incidents. This affair brought back an old memory in which I was shot with a 22 bullet going through me.
It occurred when I was 17 and my mate’s father, a Mr Lindale, took my friend and me rabbit shooting in the Wairarapa. This planned trip induced much sisterly optimistic assertion that I was bound to shoot myself, for days on end beforehand.
We duly drove over the Rimutakas to a remote back country location. Mr Lindale handed us each a 22 rifle and a pocketful of bullets and explained how to load our guns and use the safety catch. In particular he stressed not to allow any grass or whatever into the barrel.
We set out in different directions and within five minutes, creeping from bush to bush, there before me 20 metres away sat a rabbit. I brought up my rifle, aimed it and clicked the safety catch off whereupon the clicking sound saw the rabbit flee. I carried on, only, to avoid a repetition, now with my finger on the trigger and with the safety catch off.
Looking ahead scouting for another rabbit I failed to see a small swampy pool and in went my right foot.
Stepping back on to dry land, my finger still on the trigger, I rested the barrel end on my left foot to avoid anything getting in it and stretched to pull off the sodden slip-on shoe. Bang! Off went the gun and gave me a hell of a fright.
Reloading I duly carried on only now periodically looking down at the ground before me to avoid any other swampy patches. And it was doing that when I noticed each left step now caused a small scarlet fountain shooting up from the middle of my left shoe. Only then did I realise I’d shot myself.
I returned to the truck and shouted loudly, but, as I later learned, having heard first the shot, then five minutes later my shouting, both Mr Lindale and my mate, assuming I had shot a rabbit and wanted to gloat, fled further away. A couple of hours later they returned at the agreed time whereupon a shocked Mr Lindale immediately drove me to the hospital.
Feet are full of bones but miraculously my bullet having travelled through the top of my shoe, my foot and then the slip-on sole, had missed them all.
After the x-ray the hospital sterilised my foot then wrapped it with a huge pile of bandages and we went home. Against my protestations, Mr Lindale insisted on coming in to confront my parents.
We entered the sitting room where sat my parents and three sisters, around the fire. They all looked up.
“I shot myself”, I declared, revealing my bandaged foot.
My sisters literally hit the floor, rolling about with laughter, unable to contain themselves for about five minutes. Mr Lindale looked on this revelry with astonishment and left, plainly bewildered after my father had thanked him for coming in. I’d felt nothing but certainly did the following day which saw me bed-ridden, unable to walk.
My eight-plus decades have taught me one salient lesson about humour, whether black or otherwise, and that is it bears a close relationship with intelligence.
In short, Farrar’s protesters simply revealed they are dumb thick-heads and he should not give them space, as I don’t with this site when after giving Trump a well-deserved wind-up, they flood in their protests which we edit out.
This article was originally published on No Punches Pulled.
