Showing posts with label guns. Show all posts
Showing posts with label guns. Show all posts
23.10.06
16.7.06
Ricky bleeds to death.
When I was in seventh grade, I had my first experience with a friend abruptly ceasing to exist.
Ricky Duncan was the first friend I made when I had moved from a big city to a tiny, middle-of-fucking-nowhere podunk town in fourth grade. I was riding my bike around and ran into Ricky, who was also riding his bike around. He was a year younger than I was, and we hit it off and began hanging out all the time. Nearly every day, I'd ride my bike to his house, where we'd usually sit in the basement playing Nintendo for hours. Our favorite game was a two-player co-op game where both players had a little army guy at the bottom of the screen, blasting away waves and waves of enemies. The game would only let you continue so many times after dying, but I think we were able to finish the whole thing at least once.
I've never been religous, but I once went to church with Ricky and his family for some reason. I think that they didn't normally attend, but a relative was in town visiting them and he wanted to go, so they all went. I had spent the night at Ricky's, so I was already there. I rode my bike home and asked if it was alright, and then came back and we all went to church. Even as a little kid, I thought it was stupid. I remember there was a lot of singing, but I'd make up my own words or just pretend to sing when everybody else was getting into the spirit of the Lord. I don't think Ricky was very excited to be there, as he had made some negative remarks about seeing the elementary school principal there. At some point, they called all the kids to sit in the front and talk about good uses for the Bible. A few kids talked about how it was great for learning lessons about life and God. Ricky and I just sat there.
One time Ricky told me I needed to stop swearing around him, because he was finding himself swearing more and more. I asked him what was wrong with that, and he told me he thought it was wrong. I told him words weren't harmful, but he disagreed. On at least one occassion after that, he told me I had to leave his house for the rest of the day because of my foul mouth.
I can only assume it was mainly Ricky's parents that had given him the impression swearing was wrong. My parents didn't allow it, but their attitude only taught me that swearing was something you shouldn't do in front of authority figures. Swearing hurts nobody. I tried to convince Ricky of this, but he wouldn't believe me. To him, swearing was always wrong. Perhaps it was because I had always questioned authority, and maybe Ricky was one of the ones who never did. It's a trait that I notice in people now that I'm older, but probably didn't when I was ten years old.
Thinking back about Ricky, I find his attitude on swearing to be completely bizarre when contrasted to other things his parents instilled in him. Mainly, I find it mind boggling that they convinced him that swearing was always wrong, but they gave him guns. Guns kill things. What does swearing do again?
Ricky had a B.B. gun when I first met him, but my parents wouldn't let me play with it. Later, Ricky's parents bought him real guns.
In 5th grade, I moved across town, and rarely saw Ricky after that. The last time I saw him was when I was in seventh grade, during some kind of school event where they invite all the parents to come to the elementary school in the evening and watch the kids sing or some such.
"Hey, Paul," he said, passing me as everyone was leaving.
"Ricky, hey!"
After that, I kept thinking I should give him a call. He was, after all, the first friend I had made when I moved. I thought it would be nice to hang out again.
One day, I arrived home from school to find myself greeted by bad news.
"Hey, remember the first friend you made when we moved here?" my sister asked as I walked in the door.
"Yeah," I said, "Ricky."
"He's dead."
Ricky, while home alone, had accidentally shot himself. He bled to death. He was in sixth grade.
Ricky Duncan was the first friend I made when I had moved from a big city to a tiny, middle-of-fucking-nowhere podunk town in fourth grade. I was riding my bike around and ran into Ricky, who was also riding his bike around. He was a year younger than I was, and we hit it off and began hanging out all the time. Nearly every day, I'd ride my bike to his house, where we'd usually sit in the basement playing Nintendo for hours. Our favorite game was a two-player co-op game where both players had a little army guy at the bottom of the screen, blasting away waves and waves of enemies. The game would only let you continue so many times after dying, but I think we were able to finish the whole thing at least once.
I've never been religous, but I once went to church with Ricky and his family for some reason. I think that they didn't normally attend, but a relative was in town visiting them and he wanted to go, so they all went. I had spent the night at Ricky's, so I was already there. I rode my bike home and asked if it was alright, and then came back and we all went to church. Even as a little kid, I thought it was stupid. I remember there was a lot of singing, but I'd make up my own words or just pretend to sing when everybody else was getting into the spirit of the Lord. I don't think Ricky was very excited to be there, as he had made some negative remarks about seeing the elementary school principal there. At some point, they called all the kids to sit in the front and talk about good uses for the Bible. A few kids talked about how it was great for learning lessons about life and God. Ricky and I just sat there.
One time Ricky told me I needed to stop swearing around him, because he was finding himself swearing more and more. I asked him what was wrong with that, and he told me he thought it was wrong. I told him words weren't harmful, but he disagreed. On at least one occassion after that, he told me I had to leave his house for the rest of the day because of my foul mouth.
I can only assume it was mainly Ricky's parents that had given him the impression swearing was wrong. My parents didn't allow it, but their attitude only taught me that swearing was something you shouldn't do in front of authority figures. Swearing hurts nobody. I tried to convince Ricky of this, but he wouldn't believe me. To him, swearing was always wrong. Perhaps it was because I had always questioned authority, and maybe Ricky was one of the ones who never did. It's a trait that I notice in people now that I'm older, but probably didn't when I was ten years old.
Thinking back about Ricky, I find his attitude on swearing to be completely bizarre when contrasted to other things his parents instilled in him. Mainly, I find it mind boggling that they convinced him that swearing was always wrong, but they gave him guns. Guns kill things. What does swearing do again?
Ricky had a B.B. gun when I first met him, but my parents wouldn't let me play with it. Later, Ricky's parents bought him real guns.
In 5th grade, I moved across town, and rarely saw Ricky after that. The last time I saw him was when I was in seventh grade, during some kind of school event where they invite all the parents to come to the elementary school in the evening and watch the kids sing or some such.
"Hey, Paul," he said, passing me as everyone was leaving.
"Ricky, hey!"
After that, I kept thinking I should give him a call. He was, after all, the first friend I had made when I moved. I thought it would be nice to hang out again.
One day, I arrived home from school to find myself greeted by bad news.
"Hey, remember the first friend you made when we moved here?" my sister asked as I walked in the door.
"Yeah," I said, "Ricky."
"He's dead."
Ricky, while home alone, had accidentally shot himself. He bled to death. He was in sixth grade.
11.7.06
John and the cap gun.
If you buy a cap gun, or any kind of toy gun, it will probably have a bright orange plug stuck in the tip of the barrel. The manufacturers put those there so that they're easily identified as toys; they are there so nobody sees a kid holding a toy gun and shoots them with a real gun. When I first got my license, my friends and I would drive around with a cap gun, pulling drive-bys on kids, usually ones we knew. Our cap gun was fairly realistic looking, and we had popped the little orange plug out of the tip, but I'm fairly confident that nobody we shot with it ever thought the gun was real. Our intent wasn't to seriously terrorize people, and only one person ever reacted like they thought the gun was real.
As teenagers tend to do, we were driving to the mall for absolutely no good reason. We had nothing to buy, no real money to spend, and we never got chicks when we went. Still, it was a destination, and that's really the only important thing when you first start driving. When we had almost reached our destination, a car quickly veered in front of me directly before a stop light. I stomped the brakes, coming to an abrupt stop behind the guy who had cut me off, who was now waiting at the head of the line for the light to turn green.
"Motherfucker!" I said.
John, who was in the passenger seat, leaned as far as he could out the window and began firing the cap gun at the guy in front of us. He had unloaded the clip (or ring of caps, as it were) before the rest of us could even react.
A lady in the car next to us on John's side saw what he was doing and freaked out. She floored her accelerator and took off into the intersection, nearly smashing into another car before turning and speeding away.
"John!" I shouted, "What the fuck, man?"
"Yeah," said one of the guys in the back seat, "you can't do shit like that."
"I'm sorry," John said, "I wasn't thinking."
The guy in front us didn't react at all. When the light turned green, we went on our way.
As teenagers tend to do, we were driving to the mall for absolutely no good reason. We had nothing to buy, no real money to spend, and we never got chicks when we went. Still, it was a destination, and that's really the only important thing when you first start driving. When we had almost reached our destination, a car quickly veered in front of me directly before a stop light. I stomped the brakes, coming to an abrupt stop behind the guy who had cut me off, who was now waiting at the head of the line for the light to turn green.
"Motherfucker!" I said.
John, who was in the passenger seat, leaned as far as he could out the window and began firing the cap gun at the guy in front of us. He had unloaded the clip (or ring of caps, as it were) before the rest of us could even react.
A lady in the car next to us on John's side saw what he was doing and freaked out. She floored her accelerator and took off into the intersection, nearly smashing into another car before turning and speeding away.
"John!" I shouted, "What the fuck, man?"
"Yeah," said one of the guys in the back seat, "you can't do shit like that."
"I'm sorry," John said, "I wasn't thinking."
The guy in front us didn't react at all. When the light turned green, we went on our way.
11.6.06
The Fighting Mullets
When I was in high school, there was a trio of brothers who had a reputation as being some really bad motherfuckers. Their hobbies were well known, as they were vocal about their endeavors: they liked to get really trashed, and they also liked to fight. All three of them had mullets, and would walk the halls with their hands in their pockets and their chests puffed out, terrorizing the small and the weak.
My experience with them was limited, but noteworthy in the fact that I feared them. After high school, I never saw any of them, and I heard very little. This is a documentation of what I knew about the brothers, ending with the last thing I ever heard regarding them, which was that one of them ended up dying of a gunshot wound to the head.
The oldest brother was the meanest. He was a few years older than I was, but only one grade ahead. When I started school, there was a hallway my friends and I would avoid because if we went that way, old mullet and his buddies would either knock the books out of our hands, or shove us into lockers. Technically, they'd never really shove us so much as they would shove one of their huge friends into one of us smaller guys, and it would be our bodies that went crashing against the lockers.
I once had in-school suspension and had to spend the entire day in the corner of a math teacher's class. At some point, old mullet had that teachers class. When he saw me in the corner, unable to even get up without permission, he picked up two chalkboard erasers and started hitting me with them, covering my clothes and hair with chalk dust. Being a tiny little guy, I couldn't do shit about it.
The middle brother was quiet, and by any measure the least mean. He was in the same grade as his older brother, and was once in my biology class. He hung out with the same group as old mullet, but as far as I can recall, he never did any of the shoving or book-knocking. In fact, I only ever heard him speak one time. Standing in a lunch line, I once heard him to remark, "Crack some fuckin' skulls."
There was another violent redneck in my homeroom named Derrick who liked to regale us with tales of horrific animal abuse. He was also good friends with the mullet brothers, and once told us a story illustrating a day in the life of these loving characters.
In the rural area where we lived, there were this things called sandburs. They were like tiny balls of vegetation velcro whose barbed hooks made them attach easily to skin, and were painful to remove. They grew on stalks so that passing animals would inadvertently pick them up and deposit the seeds elsewhere.
Derrick, laughing so hard he could barely speak, told us how the brothers would hanging out, shirtless in the summer heat, when the oldest mullet had taken a stalk of sandburs and smashed it into his unsuspecting youngest brother, embedding lots of them deep within his back. A good laugh was enjoyed by all, save the guy with hundreds of tiny barbed thorns buried in his flesh.
The youngest mullet was few years younger than I was. By the time he arrived on the scene at my school, the oldest one had dropped out, but the new one was ready to take his place as the meanest mullet around.
Young mullet hung out with a crowd I generally identified as the Nazi stoners. They were basically the same crowd the older mullets rolled with, only younger. They were loud, they liked getting trashed, and they were total assholes.
On the way out to the bus one day, the Nazi stoners were spitting into the wind. Young mullet spat and it came dangerously close to me, prompting a laugh from the whole group. One of them yelled, "You fucking faggot!"
"Faggot!" echoed young mullet.
"Yes," I told him, figuring I might get my ass kicked but wanting to piss them off, "I'm gay!"
His smile dissolved into a sneer. He curled one hand into a fist, and then punched his other hand, growling.
Needless to say, I was very impressed.
I don't know what ever became of old mullet or young mullet, but I do know what happened to middle mullet after high school.
Middle mullet graduated and joined the army. The war in Iraq was still a couple years away, so they cleaned him up and sent him home.
He was a changed man. He once lived for no reason other than to get fucked up. Now he didn't do any drugs.
One day he got into a huge fight with old mullet. They fought like they had never fought before, trying to break each other's faces as if they were strangers.
When it was over, middle mullet cleaned the kitchen floor with a toothbrush.
And then he went to his room and shot himself in the head.
My experience with them was limited, but noteworthy in the fact that I feared them. After high school, I never saw any of them, and I heard very little. This is a documentation of what I knew about the brothers, ending with the last thing I ever heard regarding them, which was that one of them ended up dying of a gunshot wound to the head.
The oldest brother was the meanest. He was a few years older than I was, but only one grade ahead. When I started school, there was a hallway my friends and I would avoid because if we went that way, old mullet and his buddies would either knock the books out of our hands, or shove us into lockers. Technically, they'd never really shove us so much as they would shove one of their huge friends into one of us smaller guys, and it would be our bodies that went crashing against the lockers.
I once had in-school suspension and had to spend the entire day in the corner of a math teacher's class. At some point, old mullet had that teachers class. When he saw me in the corner, unable to even get up without permission, he picked up two chalkboard erasers and started hitting me with them, covering my clothes and hair with chalk dust. Being a tiny little guy, I couldn't do shit about it.
The middle brother was quiet, and by any measure the least mean. He was in the same grade as his older brother, and was once in my biology class. He hung out with the same group as old mullet, but as far as I can recall, he never did any of the shoving or book-knocking. In fact, I only ever heard him speak one time. Standing in a lunch line, I once heard him to remark, "Crack some fuckin' skulls."
There was another violent redneck in my homeroom named Derrick who liked to regale us with tales of horrific animal abuse. He was also good friends with the mullet brothers, and once told us a story illustrating a day in the life of these loving characters.
In the rural area where we lived, there were this things called sandburs. They were like tiny balls of vegetation velcro whose barbed hooks made them attach easily to skin, and were painful to remove. They grew on stalks so that passing animals would inadvertently pick them up and deposit the seeds elsewhere.
Derrick, laughing so hard he could barely speak, told us how the brothers would hanging out, shirtless in the summer heat, when the oldest mullet had taken a stalk of sandburs and smashed it into his unsuspecting youngest brother, embedding lots of them deep within his back. A good laugh was enjoyed by all, save the guy with hundreds of tiny barbed thorns buried in his flesh.
The youngest mullet was few years younger than I was. By the time he arrived on the scene at my school, the oldest one had dropped out, but the new one was ready to take his place as the meanest mullet around.
Young mullet hung out with a crowd I generally identified as the Nazi stoners. They were basically the same crowd the older mullets rolled with, only younger. They were loud, they liked getting trashed, and they were total assholes.
On the way out to the bus one day, the Nazi stoners were spitting into the wind. Young mullet spat and it came dangerously close to me, prompting a laugh from the whole group. One of them yelled, "You fucking faggot!"
"Faggot!" echoed young mullet.
"Yes," I told him, figuring I might get my ass kicked but wanting to piss them off, "I'm gay!"
His smile dissolved into a sneer. He curled one hand into a fist, and then punched his other hand, growling.
Needless to say, I was very impressed.
I don't know what ever became of old mullet or young mullet, but I do know what happened to middle mullet after high school.
Middle mullet graduated and joined the army. The war in Iraq was still a couple years away, so they cleaned him up and sent him home.
He was a changed man. He once lived for no reason other than to get fucked up. Now he didn't do any drugs.
One day he got into a huge fight with old mullet. They fought like they had never fought before, trying to break each other's faces as if they were strangers.
When it was over, middle mullet cleaned the kitchen floor with a toothbrush.
And then he went to his room and shot himself in the head.
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