Maybe it was the guns that caused my aversion to beer

March 16, 2006 - 2:17 a.m.

A long time ago the pilot told me we should go fire his gun at the shooting range because he thinks I should know how to use it. Ya know, so when we end up in a domestic dispute I at least have a fighting chance at survival. Whoever gets to the gun fastest. I’ve been watching Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Westerns, taking notes.

I don’t really have any interest in firing a gun, but you’d think that it would be right up my alley. It’s loud, hot, and maybe it will give me a nice yank with the recoil. I like aiming at things. (Whatever the hell that means). I think I don’t care for the gun because every time I fired a gun it was with the child molester next door. I’m pretty sure he used a rifle as an excuse to stand behind me and wrap his arms around me to show me how to hold it properly. I think he put his head right next to my head to demonstrate the viewfinder. And his hand on my hand to show the trigger. He was probably smelling my hair or some other sick shit. I think I repressed a lot of that.

We would shoot beer cans off of tree stumps. Full beer cans, and they would squirt beer and foam out of the holes and sometimes they blew right off the stump. Why that asshole had to be so wasteful and dump cases of beer all over the woods, I never understood. I’ve always hated beer so I won’t shed a tear for the loss. I think he was trying to impress me in a really pathetic predatory way.

Some days he would catch me playing in my yard and yell to me as he was pulling his car out of his driveway. “Hey! I’m going to the store, what kind of beer do you want?”

I was seven years old. “Uh…I don’t know…any kind.”

So I went inside and found dad, most likely drinking a beer and watching basketball while his daughter was being courted by a 45 year old man. “Dad, what kind of beer is good beer?”

Without batting an eye: “Augsburger.”

(Ha, ha, ha! I laugh now. Cheap shit.)

So I went and told Dick the Child Lover and he bought me Augsburger most times, and sometimes switched it up with Busch and Coors and other shwag piss.

Is anyone else wondering why my parents let me play with guns and beer in the woods with a childless old man? Let’s not even mention the hunting knives, fish hooks, and in-ground swimming pool when I couldn’t swim.

And the other reason I didn’t like guns, aside from that old man breathing on my neck, is that I knew that asshole was a hunter and he came home with dead things all the time. Here I was out in the woods, trying to be Snow White and shit: the Doe, A Deer Whisperer, huggin bunnies and giving squirrels gentle noogies on their cue ball heads and this Dick is out playing Disney’s Mean Ol’ White Man and killing my friends!

And even being a tiny runt and swallowing everything that an adult told me, I still knew it was bullshit that Dick set out salt cubes and vegetables in the winter, luring deer right up to his back door while he lounged his fat ass on a La Z Boy next to the glass patio doors, waiting for them to approach and then poppin a cap in their ass.

Come to think of it, that’s pretty much the same tactic he used to lure me in, except he used popsicles and money and stuffed animals.

I hope I can divorce myself from these memories and enjoy popping off a few rounds.

I had to get a gun card because since September 11, you can’t just go to the firing range for fun, you have to be registered. Not that they made it difficult or anything, I just gave them five bucks and filled out a form that said, “Are you mentally ill? Mentally retarded? Violent?” And I said, “Well HAYELL NAW I AIN’T BUT MY MAMAW IS! Does that count? Yippee Yee Haw *bang-bang*!”

And they sent me my Firearm Owner’s Identification (FOID) card post haste so now I’m fixing to git my Kill on. Shawna Mooney: First Blood.

I had to send them a photo of myself to be adhered to the card. I thought long and hard about what kind of photo to send, and rationalizing that they probably receive mostly mug-shot looking photos of men, black and white, top lighting with dark, sunken eyes, I’d give em a treat and send them The Antithesis of the FIOD Card Photo.

Like when you’re just so happy you can’t even close your fucking mouth.

Trixie voice: “Ohmigod, I am like, SO EXCITED to be handling this gun? And like? Shooting things makes me feel so powerful? And that’s like the same thing as being empowered? And that’s a feminist principal that I feel strongly about. And I also want to say that I love America? Because like, without Freedom we would live in bondage? Not the kinky kind, the kind that’s like symbolic or something? And yeah, freedom makes me feel…free. And stuff.”

I’m a Chicken Hawk, huntin for a chicken
Get paranoid when you hear my Glock clickin

Cock the hammer, it’s time for action.

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