Gravy

This brings us to the idea of gravy. I have already writ what I wanted to write and the rest (boom from above) is gravy. By 'gravy' I meant 'superfluous,' but as I wrote the word 'gravy' above it hit me that most of my life has been been gravy. The word, 'gravy' triggered a memory (tap). Without going into strenuous detail I remembered a time when I (boom) (another boom) realized that my life was gravy. It was in Charleston South Carolina. We were living across the street from the police station. The year was about 1952 or so. I had been out of the orphanage for a couple of years. I was a minor criminal in those days. I was a member of a gang which went about the neighborhood at night. We would sometimes steal hubcaps. We would often open the doors of automobiles which were parked in the shadows. We would get in and rifle through the glove compartments of those cars. We would steal items of interst. One night we hit upon a major find: a pistol. It was a hammerless .25 caliber revolver. We stole it. The pistol turned out to be booby-trapped. That is, the first round turned out to have been loaded with a minimal charge. The result of that (boom) was that the slug lodged in the barrel of the revolver instead of exiting. Our gang rode bicycles in those days and as we celebrated that coup that night the dude who had the gun fired it into the air. It went poof. We all noticed but we knew nothing about guns. Only later did one of us see that the slug was still in the barrel.
We were innocent children in those days and even after we discovered the discrepancy it did not dawn on us that what we had was a dangerous weapon. We forced the slug out of the barrel. Then we went to an open area where we had fun firing the weapon. The police arrived soon after and releived us of a dangerous weapon.
But in the meantime I had ended up with the weapon after it had been cleared. One day I (thump) sat on the bed in front of the mirror and pretended to kill myself with the hammerless .22. I clicked it a few times before I examined it. It turned out to have been loaded. There were several dents in the shells in the magazine. I think the magazine held nine shells. Two or three bullets were dented by the firing pin. As I examined those bullets I came to the conclusion that whereas I ought to be dead I was alive. I speculated that there must have been some sort of a reason for that (boom) but I could not imagine what it might be. I chalked the experience up to sheer luck and I decided there and then that the rest of my life was gravy and it did not matter at all what I did with it. (lots of boom-boom from above here.) In other words I was free. I felt that somehow fate had fucked up and I had slipped through the cracks.
I did not mention this idea to others. I informed my peers that the gun was unreliable and it was soon disposed of.
I still consider 'gravy' to be the (loud bong) symbolic idea whenever I consider my life. My life is gravy.