Microwunderkammer

 Parental Artifact #16 A toy cap gun, perhaps meant as a pendant or charm for a bracelet.

My parents were pretty much pacifists, and this was germane in my upbringing. I say “pretty much,” because they were not dogmatic or consistent. There was a definite tendency against the toy guns and army stuff that was very common among boys when I was growing up, and it was dinned into me that when roughhousing, the only acceptable place to hit somebody was on the shoulder—to the point that to this day I don’t think I could hit anybody anywhere else. On the other hand, I definitely remember my dad making a toy six-shooter out of wood and my mom making a holster for it out of vinyl “leather” when I went through a cowboy phase as a very kid—but that was a phase, and I didn’t really mourn when the barrel of the gun fell off.

My parents’ lives were necessarily more complicated than mine at that time; my dad had served a stint in the Army, and while never in combat, he thoroughly hated it. My mom’s brother is an Army lifer, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel. I never really heard that much about what he did, and he didn’t talk about it, but he was a helicopter pilot in the Vietnam war era. So I can understand why my parents might have less-than-positive feelings about militaristic toys.

Well, for a kid, that which is forbidden is of course most desirable. I sort of remember seeing this little gun in one of my mom’s little boxes of pendants and such at a young age, and being fascinated by it. I also remember her telling me that it was under no circumstances to be touched, it was dangerous, and made an unbelievably loud bang. It disappeared from view, and pretty much from my memory, for a long time. And now, after partitioning most of my parents’ estate, I have it. I really don’t know anything of its provenance, though I suspect it’s a good deal older than I am.

I found this again recently, while sorting through a box of stuff from my parents, and I thought I would have my own little celebration of the 4th of July today—and a seánce, of sorts, with my mom. It took a little bit of figuring to get it to go: how to get the cap into the gun, and then learning that it matters which direction the cap goes in. Then it was time to try it out, and see if the half-century-old powder and primer still worked.

Well by golly it did; and as my mom had told me, it is VERY loud, louder than a .22 rifle. It also made more smoke than the .22. Satisfied, I went back inside and put it away, to fire it off again next year on the 4th, or when there is something to celebrate with a bang.

Then I found out that my country has celebrated the 4th of July in a predictable way: with fireworks, parades, bands, and a mass shooting that left six dead, dozens wounded, aged from eight to eighty five. Our country is 244 years old, and I can’t tell if it is angrily adolescent, or agitatedly senile. Either way, I feel more and more that it should not be trusted with anything more than a cap pistol and some sixty year old caps, and it should be told that it can’t hit anyone anywhere except in the shoulder.