A Gun By Any Other Name Would Shoot As Sharply
Having grown up watching Sesame Street and Bugs Bunny, I was able to both read at a young age, and to understand adult humor at a young age. Hence, when I was not quite ten years old, I could understand and appreciate the lyrics of John Phillips' "Straight Shooter". Shoot straight from the hip both metaphorically, and literally....yeah. Got it. Cool. "She's a real straight shooter" meaning, she tells it like it is. "I'm a real straight shooter" meaning....whatever else it means.
My first recollection of pulling a trigger comes with my memory of visiting my second cousins in Westport, CT, and shooting a BB gun. I was around nine years old and I had surprisingly good aim, but my sister had even better.
My next recollection, other than water pistols and cap guns, was when I first pulled the trigger of a .22 rifle and had very good aim then too. I was in my early twenties, hanging out with my first boyfriend and his brother-in-law up in the Catskill Mountains of NY somewhere, shooting at targets in an empty field.
My next recollection of a gun - but this time I didn't pull the trigger - was when that same ex-boyfriend, who was many years older than me, caught me giving googly eyes to a very good-looking patron of a bar we were frequenting. I went home with the older boyfriend without giving my name or number to the younger and better-looking bar patron (much to my regret, to this day) only to receive a lecture on how to stand by your man, which ended in my ex-boyfriend assembling his torn-apart hand gun and aiming it at me, only to move the aim about a foot away from me at the last moment before firing it at a 4 by 4 in our kitchen doorway instead. Simply because a) he realized that aiming it too close to me might be dangerous and b) the kitchen window was directly behind me and he might innocently shoot a passer-by in the heat of his anger. I took my belongings and myself to my mother's house that night, and then made the grand mistake of going back to this guy anyway.
I was young and stupid, what can I say? And...I digress.
Fast forward to California and my next gun. Well, not MY gun, but my next boyfriend and HIS gun. Er, guns.
My next boyfriend, after I dumped the older guy, was a military brat. Gorgeous, six years older than me, promising career in construction, half German and half black. My mother met him and liked him. He had a sister born in Germany, where his parents met and married (his father an MP, his mother a German secretary). He himself was born in San Francisco, at the Presideo. He was moved to KY shortly thereafter, but also got to visit both his Louisiana born and bred family, as well as his German born and bred family, before moving back to California where he had a good middle class life.
For some reason, he had a chip on his shoulder, though. He claims it was because he was both black and white. Me, being born white, I gave him that. Couldn't argue with it. Tried to sympathize with it. Having since then read "Dreams of My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope", I still don't understand the chip on the shoulder routine but I can at least put myself into his shoes a little more.
And when I discovered a few years into our relationship that this guy REALLY liked guns, I tried to get into it. I went to the range with him. Fired a small little Bryco Arms gun meant for small-handed people, i.e., women or beginners. He advised me to start small, with a handgun, so he bought this particular gun just for me. I didn't like it, and told him so. The shells scared me. The little explosion in my hands scared me. The fact that one misstep and I could kill somebody with this thing scared me.
So I sat, bored, with headphones on, and watched him fire his new shotgun, then his new rifle, at the range, and told him I didn't care for any of it. I watched him continue to buy new guns, selling some here and there after he tired of them and found that they didn't quite shoot as smoothly as he'd hoped, or feel as good in his hands as he'd hoped. I watched as he switched up more and more guns for ones that were more powerful and more beautiful and much bigger that he liked more.....
Meantime, it's getting close to the year 2000 and he's stockpiling on gas masks and camouflage clothing for both of us and storing them in a trunk.
And I'm thinking.....okay.......here's a guy who's getting increasingly paranoid about Y2K and he's stockpiling guns and watching Fox News and hating on Clinton even more than I am, and he's got this chip on his shoulder for no reason, and he's abusive, and......buying more guns. And taking them out, on occasion, for no reason, and polishing their stocks, and gazing down their scopes, while pointing them at our apartment walls in our living room.
And he's wondering why I'm getting more and more skittish around him.
Heh.
Well, those of you who know me, know that I ended up leaving him shortly thereafter. After he put me in a choke hold and threatened to shoot me, or a cop, or himself if he came home that day to find me gone. After he said this while stuffing a handgun into the waistband of his jeans.
This guy thinks he's sane.
This guy STILL can't understand why I left him.
This guy has guns.
Now, maybe the guy in VT and maybe the guy in AZ are more normal than my not-so-normal ex-bf.
But.....
Give me a man who respects guns, and doesn't use them to make a statement, and I'll give you a woman who can respect that man....maybe.
And that's my statement.
Baby are you holding?
Holding anything but me?
Yeah!
Cuz I'm a real straight shooter if ya know what I mean!
My first recollection of pulling a trigger comes with my memory of visiting my second cousins in Westport, CT, and shooting a BB gun. I was around nine years old and I had surprisingly good aim, but my sister had even better.
My next recollection, other than water pistols and cap guns, was when I first pulled the trigger of a .22 rifle and had very good aim then too. I was in my early twenties, hanging out with my first boyfriend and his brother-in-law up in the Catskill Mountains of NY somewhere, shooting at targets in an empty field.
My next recollection of a gun - but this time I didn't pull the trigger - was when that same ex-boyfriend, who was many years older than me, caught me giving googly eyes to a very good-looking patron of a bar we were frequenting. I went home with the older boyfriend without giving my name or number to the younger and better-looking bar patron (much to my regret, to this day) only to receive a lecture on how to stand by your man, which ended in my ex-boyfriend assembling his torn-apart hand gun and aiming it at me, only to move the aim about a foot away from me at the last moment before firing it at a 4 by 4 in our kitchen doorway instead. Simply because a) he realized that aiming it too close to me might be dangerous and b) the kitchen window was directly behind me and he might innocently shoot a passer-by in the heat of his anger. I took my belongings and myself to my mother's house that night, and then made the grand mistake of going back to this guy anyway.
I was young and stupid, what can I say? And...I digress.
Fast forward to California and my next gun. Well, not MY gun, but my next boyfriend and HIS gun. Er, guns.
My next boyfriend, after I dumped the older guy, was a military brat. Gorgeous, six years older than me, promising career in construction, half German and half black. My mother met him and liked him. He had a sister born in Germany, where his parents met and married (his father an MP, his mother a German secretary). He himself was born in San Francisco, at the Presideo. He was moved to KY shortly thereafter, but also got to visit both his Louisiana born and bred family, as well as his German born and bred family, before moving back to California where he had a good middle class life.
For some reason, he had a chip on his shoulder, though. He claims it was because he was both black and white. Me, being born white, I gave him that. Couldn't argue with it. Tried to sympathize with it. Having since then read "Dreams of My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope", I still don't understand the chip on the shoulder routine but I can at least put myself into his shoes a little more.
And when I discovered a few years into our relationship that this guy REALLY liked guns, I tried to get into it. I went to the range with him. Fired a small little Bryco Arms gun meant for small-handed people, i.e., women or beginners. He advised me to start small, with a handgun, so he bought this particular gun just for me. I didn't like it, and told him so. The shells scared me. The little explosion in my hands scared me. The fact that one misstep and I could kill somebody with this thing scared me.
So I sat, bored, with headphones on, and watched him fire his new shotgun, then his new rifle, at the range, and told him I didn't care for any of it. I watched him continue to buy new guns, selling some here and there after he tired of them and found that they didn't quite shoot as smoothly as he'd hoped, or feel as good in his hands as he'd hoped. I watched as he switched up more and more guns for ones that were more powerful and more beautiful and much bigger that he liked more.....
Meantime, it's getting close to the year 2000 and he's stockpiling on gas masks and camouflage clothing for both of us and storing them in a trunk.
And I'm thinking.....okay.......here's a guy who's getting increasingly paranoid about Y2K and he's stockpiling guns and watching Fox News and hating on Clinton even more than I am, and he's got this chip on his shoulder for no reason, and he's abusive, and......buying more guns. And taking them out, on occasion, for no reason, and polishing their stocks, and gazing down their scopes, while pointing them at our apartment walls in our living room.
And he's wondering why I'm getting more and more skittish around him.
Heh.
Well, those of you who know me, know that I ended up leaving him shortly thereafter. After he put me in a choke hold and threatened to shoot me, or a cop, or himself if he came home that day to find me gone. After he said this while stuffing a handgun into the waistband of his jeans.
This guy thinks he's sane.
This guy STILL can't understand why I left him.
This guy has guns.
Now, maybe the guy in VT and maybe the guy in AZ are more normal than my not-so-normal ex-bf.
But.....
Give me a man who respects guns, and doesn't use them to make a statement, and I'll give you a woman who can respect that man....maybe.
And that's my statement.
Baby are you holding?
Holding anything but me?
Yeah!
Cuz I'm a real straight shooter if ya know what I mean!
