Giant Slingshot 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
Several Years ago I recieved a christmas present from my brother-in-law. This was the most dangerous and alluring "toy" I had ever seen. It was a water-balloon sling shot. It consisted of about 6 feet of rubber tubing with a cloth cup in the middle for the water balloon. It was designed use by 3 people, two people holding each side of the slingshot, and one pulling back and firing the balloon. The absolute best part of the device was it's warning. sewn into the fabric of the cup was a warning that read CAUTION: Do not shoot at people, balloons can travel at up to 70 miles per hour, may cause facial fractures.
We had tested teh device on many occasions, pacing off the distance of our shots, some of these distances approached 200 yards. Launching a balloon over trees, or entire forsests of them was no problem. It was a great "toy."
During the summer of 2001 on a lazy lake day we broke out the slingshot and were trying to hit an empty beer keg on the other side of the yard with supersonic waterballoons. After realizing the poor accuracy, we quickly bored of shooting balloons and our actions escalated to a much more dangerous activity. My Brother-in-law had this "wonderful" idea of shooting rocks out across the lake. we proceeded to fire rocks ranging from fist size to golfball size out into the lake, they would fly a tremendous distance before hitting the water with a huge spash, sometimes skipping up to 15-20 times. While doing this my brother in law grabbed a rather jagged rock about the size of a flattened golf ball and began pulling back on the cup with all his might. we had the slingshot stretched out probably 10 feet, he was sitting on the ground pushing himself back even further, this was his biggest mistake as his legs were in front of the cup that held the stone. Because of the distance we had stretched the slingshot the tubes did not hold the cup square when he let go and the cup flipped downward, firing the rock at about 50-70 miles per hour directly into my brother in laws thigh. The resulting injury looked extremely painful, and must have been as he was 25 years old and almost crying on the ground. There was a depression in the center of the bruise the exact size and shape of the rock, with abrasions all the way around the edges. Extending entirely around his leg were the ugliest, most painful bruising I had ever seen, they included nearly every color of the spectrum. The bruise was also roughly 14 inches long (up and down his leg).
while this did not result in sterilization or death, we did realize one very important lesson from this fateful day.....Stupid hurts. Submitted on 06/22/2002
Submitted by:
Dave
Reference:
N/A
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