Whilst I was a young boy I, like many others, owned a Cap Gun. Unlike most however, I did not realise the dangers of such a toy, or at least its ammunition, if used in an inappropriate manner.
Our schools P&C had been employed to cater for a Motor Cycle Endurance event in my home town and thus I had to attend with my mother. I had just recently purchased a cap gun from somewhere and I wanted to show it off to all my friends so I brought it along with me.
All was going well, we were firing it at random objects and no doubt one another when the centre of this story began to unfold. At the property the endurance ride was being held at, there was a big old tree with huge roots that came out of the ground and were good fun for climbing and running all over. We were chasing one another on the roots when all of a sudden I slipped and I heard a huge bang behind me. I was startled and thought it was someone playing around with a bike when all of a sudden I felt a pain in my backside. I looked down and there was a hole where my pocket had been and a mass of red plastic stuck to my skin. I quickly removed the plastic, tearing away the first few layers of skin with it and creating an amount of pain quite powerful to a young lad such as myself.
It had turned out that the power of the fall onto the roots had been enough to set off all of the caps that I had been carrying in my back pocket. After further investigation we found that the packet the caps had come in had a warning stating "Do not carry in pockets". I managed to receive further humiliation from a small article in the local newspaper and from that day on I never carried caps in my pockets