• Many man-made things in the world were created to protect people from objects, weather, animals, or other people such as: shields, houses, air bags, and clothes. Another example is a gun safe; a steel, air-tight, person sized box that is designed to keep kids out of it. Perfectly harmless, right?

    Clang! The orange basketball hit the rim of a white and blue basketball hoop.

    "Dang, I missed again," I said as I ran to retrieve the ball that was bouncing down the black asphalt driveway. After I caught up to it and stopped its escape onto the street I glanced at my house.

    It was a white single story building with an unattached garage that was the same color. A garden circled the house that was filled with flowers, plants, and a few bushes. The almost unbearable mid-June weather made the asphalt scorching hot and the thermometer next to the black 624 house numbers read 92 degrees.

    I was a skinny, not athletic boy with short dirty blond hair. Blue-rimmed glasses rested in front of my eyes that allowed me to see clearly past my outstretched hand. I was a nice, energetic kid. I wasn't that different from anyone else my age at the time.

    "Jesse," I heard as I ambled to my house. "You're a smart kid, right? I'm about to mow the lawn. Find something to do in the front yard with your brothers for a while."

    "Sure, where are they?" I inquired. I found them in the back yard swinging. We had a tan swing set that had a slide, small sandbox, monkey bars and, obviously, swings. "Let's go in the front and play hide and seek. I'll be it. Go hide while I count to 30."

    My brothers were only four and five. The younger one, Seth, looked almost like me at that age. The only obvious difference was his eyes were brown and mine were blue. The older one, Alex, looked almost nothing like me. He resembled, or so I was told, a younger version of his father, who had been my step-father for a few years.

    Before I got to five I heard the shuffling of feet into the garage. I finished counting with a sly smile on my face. Maneuvering through a maze of toys, tools, and random items I made my way to a dark blue gun safe. It was a birthday present given to my step-dad for his birthday the day before.

    I was just about to open the door when I saw something at the top of the safe. It was a shiny silver knob that had numbers around it and a logo on the flat front. I touched it and discovered that, although it was hot outside, the knob felt cold. Experimentally, I turned it back and forth. Nothing happened, so I tried to open the door. It wouldn't budge. I tried to yank it open, but it still wouldn't move at all. Frightened, I ran out of the garage to find my mom. I ran inside yelling for her after searching and screaming for what felt like an eternity; I remembered she was in the back mowing the lawn.

    "Mom! Mom!" I yelled at the top of my lungs as I thrust open the sliding door and ran onto the wooden deck.

    "What is it?" she demanded after turning off the deafening lawnmower. I gave her a brief summary of what had transpired while she was decapitating the untidy grass blades that blanketed the lawn. My mom mumbled something while sprinting to my brothers' steel coffin.

    After withdrawing a piece of paper containing the combination out of the second drawer of a workbench she tried opening the safe. Nothing happened.

    By now my brothers had realized they couldn't get out and were screaming for help. My mom was frantically trying to open the air-tight death trap, but it refused to budge. She sprinted inside to the phone and called my step-dad at work. After verifying that she did in fact have the right combination, my mom dashed back to try another attempt at a rescue.

    It opened. My brothers' faces were deep red and they were gasping for air. A mixture of sweat and tears dripped off their faces. After calming them down and sending me to my room, my mom gave my brothers ice cream and put them in a cold bath to further cool them down.

    What felt like an eternity, but was really only ten minutes later, my mom came down to my room in the basement of the house. She yelled at me and "punished" me with a plastic spatula. Trust me, it felt a lot worse than it sounds.

    Many man-made things in this world were created to protect, but every once in a while that very thing does more hurting than helping. This was one of those times. Because of what should have never happened, I learned that a gun safe can be a very unsafe thing.