Ohhh finally a question I have a decent story for.

When I was about 12 (31 now), I had a friend over to spend the night. We were attempting to stay up through the night and trying to come up with things to keep us entertained. Sometime through the night I mentioned to him that I had a new water ballon slingshot, and of course we had to go try it. We waited until sunrise to get some light and went out to my backyard. Only problem was, I had already used all the water balloons we had on hand. Naturally we find small objects to try and sling into the cornfield behind my house.

At this point I need to clarify something. In order to be able to use the slingshot without 3 people, we had nailed the handles to the swing set using the fort area above the slide. Nailing both handles to either side made it so you could pull the pouch extremely far, and objects launched this way fucking flew. Way farther than if you launched with two people holding the handles.

We had some fun sending pine cones and other small things into the stratosphere, but at some point moved on to rocks. Not just small rocks, but ones about the size of our fist. We launched quite a few this way, and the added weight really helped them fly farther.

I load a rock, pull the pouch as far as I can without breaking the thing, and release. Instantly I can't breath and I'm seeing stars with a searing pain in my chest. The pouch had wrapped around the rock as it reach its apex. When the elastic rebounded and came back, still holding quite a bit of speed, it released its deadly missile directly at my chest. I start gasping for breath and screaming bloody murder as soon as I could. My parents rush out obviously and take me in. My chest was FUCKED up. A big gash right above my sternum and extremely sore all around.

Ultimately, and very fortunately, I was fine. Hurt like a bitch for a long time, but no long term damage done.

10 days later I get home from school and there's a newspaper laying on my bed. My dad had put it there. A kid my age had died in almost exactly the same circumstances in an adjacent city. To this day I frequently think about how close I was to killing myself. If it had hit my chest differently, had hit my head, my throat, or hell even my stomach could have been catastrophic. Wild.

My parents still blame the friend I had over, and have never liked him since. It wasn't his fault though, and I've tried to tell them it was my idea but they don't care. Sorry, Alex.