Lessons Learned the Hard Way

Back in the 1960s political correctness had yet to arrive. That alone made the decade worthwhile in my opinion. Other than that it was a nasty time. There were racial tensions all over the place. There was a war nobody understood or liked. Poverty was a big deal. People were being overwhelmed by technology.

It's a good that things have changed so much in the past forty years, isn't it?

But back then it was totally appropriate for children to play with toy guns. It was encouraged. There were entire aisles in the toy sections of bigger stores devoted to hand guns, rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, etc. And where I grew up it wasn't just the boys who played gunfighter and war. The girls were just as prone to violence as the boys.

The cool thing about playing guns was that you only missed when you wanted to miss, and you were only shot when you wanted to be - or everyone else insisted you were. And if you were the socially dominant one that meant never. I was never the socially dominant one. Got shot lots of times.

It was frustrating, though, to be told I had been shot when I knew for a fact that my "enemy" hadn't even managed to point their weapon at me. You see this on the old western shows all the time. There's a gunfight, and the hero fires his weapon at a forty-five degree angle to the ground. The bad guy puts his hand over his heart and falls dead. Heart attack, I guess. It's a good reason not to be a bad guy. Apparently it causes heart problems.

Chris's dad owned a cabinet shop, and as a treat he made wooden guns which fired rubber bands. Chris was thrilled. Now he would have positive proof of his prowess with weapons. The rubber bands would not lie.

He and his brother and cousin all had them, giving them what the rest of us considered an unfair advantage. We were horribly jealous. Chris and Dale had pistols, and all three had rifles. The only difference between the pistols and the rifles was that the pistols weren't rifles and the rifles weren't pistols. No difference in accuracy or distance.

The pistols were quickly abandoned after Chris and Dale shot themselves in the foot several times. The rifles worked fine - if they could get closer than ten feet to their target - and it wasn't windy.

I was lucky enough to get my own version of a projectile firing weapon. It was an oversized pistol which had one redeeming value: it fired bullets.

The bullets were plastic, of course. But they had the added benefit of being loadable. One just took off the back, filled the tube with baby powder, replaced the back, put the bullets in the gun and went off to shoot something. The rounded point was open so that the bullet would leave a powder mark as proof of accuracy. The other kids hated this weapon. Why? I was good with it.

You see, Daddy had taught me to use guns when I was five. I learned to respect them like I would a butcher's knife. Real guns would really kill. And they didn't care who they killed. Even when I played with toy guns I was not allowed to treat the weapons indiscriminately. I was allowed to point my weapons at people on one condition: I intended to shoot them. That went for play time as well as real time.

That taught me to be careful on my fast draw. I could outdraw anyone. And with the projecting bullets I had proof of my accuracy. Of course, it was hard to miss when one was only six feet away from the enemy. Plastic bullets had a similar problem with distance as rubber bands.

The biggest problem I had was that holsters were generally made to be worn on the right side. I wore my gun on the left. This required a bit of fanangling, and the result was my gun refused to remain holstered when I wanted it to be. This meant many accidental drops to the ground and eventually a broken gun. So much for the fastest gun alive.

I've always liked shooting guns. Just not at living things. Never been much for hunting. Went a few times without killing anything. Then, the last time I went, I did. I remember hesitating before firing my weapon. I didn't want to do it. Then logic worked in my brain. What the h*ll was I doing out there if I wasn't going to complete the mission? Others were depending on me to do this. So I fired.

I felt sick, and distant from myself. Almost numb. I didn't like the feeling of remorse. This was not play time. I had killed something. On purpose. Just so I could eat it. I made a promise that I would not hunt again, and I haven't.

Son has some toy guns. Spouse got them for him. It never occurred to me to buy them. I have placed the same rule upon him that Daddy did to me: do not point the gun at anything you do not intend to shoot. And that includes the cat.

I knew some kids in school who had taught their dog to fall over and play dead when they pretended to shoot it. Don't waste your time trying that with a cat. Cats just like at you like you're nuts. I think they're right.

For myself, my shooting days are over.