A Small Christmas Story

Every Boy Wanted One of These. Click the Pick to See the Movie.

 

 

I have my own Red Ryder Christmas story, but it's not as sugary as the 1983 movie. The first time I touched a BB gun happened about five months before in July when Jim and I made friends with a kid named Baxter. He had, what amounted to me at the time, was a canon called the Crosman 760 Power Master pump bb gun. This could shoot holes through stockade fences. I tried it a few times in his back yard and the next thought I had was, “I have to get one of these! I just have too!”

Of course, there were obstacles to owning one. My damn parents. My Dad and Mom were both worry worts. One time, I was helping my Dad do some lawn work with a hand held electric lawn trimmer when I put it down to go inside for lunch without him knowing I had done so. I was on the north side of the house, he on the east. As I was sitting at the kitchen table eating, he comes charging into the house thinking I had cut every finger off with the thing as he did not hear it chattering away after a few minutes.

He admits to my Mom that when he noticed that he had not heard the trimmer being used, he jumped to conclusion that I had somehow horribly injured myself and ran inside to see what help he could provide. Mom and I both looked at him as if he were insane. I said, “Wouldn't you have heard me screaming at the top of my lungs had I cut off just one finger with it?”

(Perhaps one day I'll tell you how I turned the tops of my index and middle fingers on my left hand to hamburger with a lawn mower...but not today. This is a different story!)

So, my parents weren't about to hand over a gun to me when they thought I'd shoot out everyone's eye up and down the street with it. Or shoot out a window or the cat or the mailman or...

So for about five months, I had to use the best of my 12 years of experience with manipulating my parents. Actually my Dad who I could tell wasn't too keen on the idea. If he said yes, my Mom would go along. I was a sly one I can tell you. The best approach was of complete subtlety.

I broached the subject on Friday nights. On those nights, we always went out to eat at the Friendly Tap restaurant and after knocking back his two Manhattans (“Please, with whiskey and dry vermouth!) he'd loosen up, become more amiable and then I'd unleash my PSYOPS attack on him.

I didn't come out and request a bb gun for Christmas, that's way too abrupt. I just talked about them, any gun in general. My Dad had been in the Army during the Korean War so I'd ask about the guns he used then. Or I'd ask about if he had any BB guns as a kid. He claimed he never owned one. You see, dropping a few small, innocuous ideas here and there, spaced a week apart, was the best way to approach that lion's den and convince him to let YOU eat HIM.

With each week that passed, I applied slight but steady pressure on him. He wasn't stupid, he figured out I wanted one for the holidays. I'd get his views that they “weren't toys” or “we're dangerous” but I'd counter that safety could be learned and there was risk in everything.

On most Saturday nights, my parents would be at the kitchen table watching the TV night line up (Mary Tyler Moore, Newhardt, Love-American Style) and sometimes I'd sit with them. Then came on a commercial for a rifle that “shot” light at a target that either registered your aim as a hit or not. I saw my Dad's eyes light up just for a second at that idea. I turned to him and said...”Ah, who would want that anyway? It shoots at one thing and probably takes 8 D sized batteries.” I didn't want a toy that couldn't shoot through a beer can!

I was making some progress with him when one night he let slip he owned a BB gun when he was eight years old. I then had him. I went into a bit of a sarcastic tirade about his argument that I “wasn't old enough” when HE himself had one at eight. I won.

My Dad, though at times a “Presidente For Life” dictator, did appreciate a good cogent argument from me, or at least my attempts at them. He found it harder and harder to issue orders to me because I became better and better at spotting irrationality. He hated to be called irrational and if I could argue my case and win. I won.

“Because I SAID so.” lost it's authority with Dad. His own kid would poke major holes in it. And if he did make “I said so” stick due to being stubborn, I would acquiesce but go Viet Cong on him later. That is, I did whatever he said "No" to behind his back. I was learning Sun Tzu's Art of War on my own. I was a tenacious kid about certain things back then. If I wanted something, I was going to get it come Hell or High Water. I usually succeeded.

My Dad gave in and we made the trek to Ann & Hope to purchase it, to be opened for Christmas. Until then,  he had kept it under his bed and I'd sneak it out, fill it up with bb's and go upstairs and start popping away at various things in my room.   I just couldn't wait till Christmas to shoot it.  The weapon wasn't loud as it was low powered and the TV volume in the kitchen was set on “10.” After a few minutes I'd sneak it back to it's box under the bed.

Finally Christmas came and I opened my presents. I opened the box for the gun and I gave a very heart felt “Thank you” for being allowed to have it and then acted like I couldn’t care less by pushing it aside while going after the other presents. But, an hour later my brother and I were downstairs popping my old coloring books with it.

 

 

This was it. The Daisy Model 96. Pathetically weak and underpowered but to me, it was an AK 47.

 

 

I wasn't a moron with the gun. I knew it could “put an eye” out or send a bb two inches into my flesh. But being a kid you are a moron a times, it comes with the territory. In the following January, I was popping just about anything in the cellar I could get away with popping when I just aimed it at the concrete wall and fired. The bb had hit the wall and blew out a piece of cement with a puff of dust and I heard a funny sound returning to me. It was a long whizzzing sound and I felt a “tink!” on my two front teeth.

“Shit? What was that? as I held my mouth. “Was that a ricochet? I thought.

I went upstairs to the bathroom mirror and looked. I had chipped my right front big tooth near the bottom. There wasn't much missing but you could tell the tooth no longer had any clean lines. Yes, it was a ricochet and I had shot myself.

“Oh FUCK!” If my Mom ever finds this out why this occurred, I'll never live it down.

A few weeks went by where I learned NEVER to smile too much in front of Mom. I managed to get away with it, for a while, when she then said..”What's wrong with your tooth?” All Moms know their kid's inside and out. Any changes in their bodies and Mom will spot it.

I had already thought up an explanation (read this as a BIG lie) and told her I was riding my bike with Jimmy when we both decided we'd try riding on frozen puddles. I lost control of the bike and hit the ice with my face, chipping my tooth some.

I got a 180 second chewing out for doing something “So foolish and stupid” but I stood there, taking in every insult as I knew this was far better than the super nova my Mom would've exploded into had she found out what really happened.



A year later, when I was 13, we had our first Christmas without Dad as he had died earlier in the year. I make no pretense at being the most moral person at all, even at that age. I managed to convince my Mom to get me a Crosman 760 Pump Master bb gun as she had NO idea of the difference between that and the low powered Daisy gun I had. My Dad, had he been around, would've known though and prevented any such purchase. A Crosman 760 could shoot through galvanized steel. The Daisy I owned might have shot through a few beer cans.

This was the second one. Eminently more powerful and dangerous.

 

 

It's funny how we still carry our hobbies, interests as a child to adulthood. Women of my age collect dolls they had as children. There's one guy I know who loved planes as a kid and today has one of those radio controlled airplanes. I myself have a Diana Mayer & Grammelspacher pellet rifle I purchased years ago. A pellet rifle is just a more accurate type of air gun, but still in the same caliber as a crappy BB gun. The difference is that this thing I own could blow a hole through the wall of my house. Gotta love that German engineering.

 

 

This puppy is serious business. Can nail a tack at 90 yards. It oughta, I paid enough for it. Those marks at the butt came from my Shepherd chewing on it when very young.

 

And yes, I learned not to shoot concrete walls with it.

Men are just boys with bigger toys as the saying goes.