"The Sky is Falling" she said. And thirty-eight of the victims died.

When the little red hen warned that the sky was falling we all knew she was just plain wrong. The sky is not going to fall! Right?

Or at least that is what I thought until the sky fell.

It was a very hot summer day and something was in the air that I cannot describe...heavy, foreboding and very dark skies approached. Then it hailed...golf ball sized stones fell from the sky and the roar inside our home was deafening.

from Wikipedia

Now we don't live in tornado country so you really have to excuse my feint heart. Normally we don't run for cover because of the weather. It was something very new for me.

But, it wasn't until we began to repair the roof on our house the it began to sink in on me that things do fall out of the sky...very scary and dangerous thing. It is simple. What goes up does come down.

And so it was that we found a slug from a 38 handgun lodged in the roof of our house. I could only think "ouch"! Wouldn't that really hurt if it hit you on the way down even if the blunt side of the slug came first?

I began to wonder...are those bullets that people fire into the air when they celebrate lethal? Here is what I found:

[This information came from an ] article from the Los Angeles Times about the problem of falling bullets in L.A. around New Year’s and the Fourth of July. According to the article, doctors at King/Drew Medical Center, a major L.A. trauma center, published a report in a medical journal (Journal of Trauma, December 1994) saying that between 1985 and 1992 they treated 118 people for falling bullet injuries around New Year’s Eve or the Fourth of July. Thirty-eight of the victims died.

I don't know why I thought about this today...maybe our country looking a hornets nest in the eye left me feeling that maybe the sky will fall...maybe. And those folks in the middle east do fire bullets in the air to celebrate a lot.

What is on your mind today?

b+