Shooting an arrow at the sun

Posted
Way back, my friend, Mike, and I would shoot bows and arrows. We would start in his back yard. We could shoot a couple of times, and then we would be at the school. We could shoot a couple of more times and get across the playground yard, the football field, and one more shot and we would be in Thomas’ yard. Thomas would get his bow and we would shoot in a field behind his house and then head to my yard. We would reverse course and head back through all sorts of scenarios. We would split up and head back home. It was always a fun afternoon. We had been through Robin Hood, Indian tribes and even Japanese assassins. We had so much fun; I can see why many TV shows still have people using archery instead of guns. We carried this archery practice over to our Boy Scout contests. We won several. One contest was almost a no contest. Mike was by far the best shot. We let him go first, and he hit the bulls eye. I hit the bull’s eye. Thomas hit just out of the bulls eye. The other teams were intimidated and never caught up. One thing we tried was shooting an arrow straight up. This was a risky proposition. If the arrow went straight up, it could come back and hit the shooter. We experimented with doing this. T wo of us would stand a distance away and try to watch the arrow. If we lost sight of the arrow we would yell, “Run!” and scatter. The arrow never went straight up and it never came back to here we were standing at the start. This brings us to the present moment. What is the point of this old story? I just read about a guy who had realized some great achievement. He likened the achievement to shooting an arrow into the sun. That set me to thinking and that is always a bad thing. I wondered what that could mean. I was researching the saying. There is a story about a rabbit shooting the sun with an arrow. The sun began to leak fire that covered the land. Everything was burned. The rabbit survived by hiding under a bush. The little green bush was burned but after the fire the leaves were yellow. The rabbit had little spots on its back where the fire had touched him. To this day the plant put out yellow leaves and the rabbits have little spots on his back. That was all a nice story but I thought it had to be something more. I believed that it was about attaining something that was so important; it would be as if you could shoot an arrow into the sun. What an accomplishment! Being able to see the tiny arrow going to the sun would be a great accomplishment. I’m trying to figure a way to put the saying “Shooting an arrow into the sun” into my everyday speech. That would be a good thing to say. Just think of the feeling you would get if you could accomplish this. It’s just a metaphor for achieving something great. One of my friends doesn’t get like all the trips around the meaning of words. His response to this whole story is a lot simpler. He always says, “What’s a meadow for? It is where a cow grazes.” Bobby Jonte is the president of the Bank of Greeleyville.