I was a little embarrassed that only a few days after scoffing at how dangerous Oakland is, I got shot. I intended to post about it, but I just never got around to it. Each time I thought about it, it moved farther away from “kind of scary” and closer and closer to “old news,” but it never quite became a blog entry.
Anyway, one Wednesday night last fall, I was riding my bike back from a movie in my little neighborhood around Lake Merritt. While in the bike lane turning right from 14th to Oak, I got shot once in the back with (most likely) a .22 caliber pellet, from a car that slowed down in the turn lane.
The projectile (after passing through my jacket, a box containing three slices of cheese pizza, my jacket again, and two t-shirts) scraped off a “micrometer” or so of my skin (to use the word of the paramedic who put a gauze pad on my minor flesh wound) and was never seen again. Two immediate responders (fireman, paramedic) each used the phrase “you got lucky” when they heard the story and saw me in my shocked and exhausted but otherwise totally ambulatory state.
There’s more to the story — including the 99.999% likelihood that the supposed pellet came from the same car that shot my friend at 7-11 a few minutes later — but pretty much anyone I know who reads this has heard it. So I’ll just document it here for posterity (or, you know, in case you hadn’t heard) and I’ll fill out the rest of the story later.
Or not.
My brother tells me the report is closed. And that’s life in Oakland.