OK. With Halloween coming up, I figured I would post this one again. Some of the folks who have been on this forum a while may have heard this one. For some of you, it will be new.
It was around 1990. Saddam Hussein had not yet made his uninvited trip to Kuwait, and in the State of New Jersey a teenaged boy was on the way back home from a mall with his dad. That kid was me.
It was something of a tradition that if things weren't really interesting at the mall, and we were going home early, that we would stop into a Sport shop that was on the way home. Dad liked to show me historic pieces; octagonal barrel Winchesters, bolt action rifles from the world wars, and quite a few M-1 Garands and M-1 Carbines that dotted the "Used Gun" racks whenever we drifted in. Tonight would be no exception, and we pulled into the parking lot there around 9 PM or so.
As usual, we walked into the store. We headed to the back, where there was a handgun counter. The guy there knew us, and together we looked over the pistols that were there beneath the glass. One of them was a Mauser handgun. It was not the C-96 "Broomhandle" that was known from "Star Wars" movies and other more recent pop culture appearances, but a small 7.65mm pistol that looked like it could slip into one's pocket. It had angles and corners and the look of a different time. The tag attached to it read "1902," and it looked almost impossibly old. There was a small leather holster with it, fit to the pistol, dry and cracked, looking just as old, but there all the same.
There was a bit of conversation, and the guy behind the counter got the pistol out of the case. He handed it to my dad, who checked it over, and then it was handed to me.
The moment I took that pistol into my hand, the temperature in the room dropped at least twenty degrees. The hair on my arms went up. The hair on my legs went up, and the hair on the back of my neck went up. I felt someone behind me, and I knew that if I turned around, someone would be standing there. That is the only way to describe it. While my dad and the guy behind the counter kept talking, a conversation I couldn't even hear at that point, I trained the little pistol around the room, at various targets that were set up in the shop, and at the stuffed trophies that were there as well.
The pistol went right between the eyes on the trophies, every time. It went right to the bull's eye of each target, every time. It was like the scene in the original "Robocop" where Peter Weller's computer-enhanced policeman character sees every target in a room, and every one is automatically locked in. There was also a feeling that I was not the only person involved in the aiming. Everywhere the pistol was pointed, it just lined up. Once, twice, again, again.
As my dad and the guy behind the counter came to the end of their conversation, I handed the pistol back. I didn't say much as we walked out of the store. I can still remember the hairs on my legs brushing against my trousers as I walked out, and as I walked into my house about twenty minutes or so later.
I can't say what it was, I can't say what intent may have been there. I can only say that I felt something, and I had never felt it before handling a firearm, nor since. I hope whatever it was found peace out there somewhere.
God Bless.
David
It was around 1990. Saddam Hussein had not yet made his uninvited trip to Kuwait, and in the State of New Jersey a teenaged boy was on the way back home from a mall with his dad. That kid was me.
It was something of a tradition that if things weren't really interesting at the mall, and we were going home early, that we would stop into a Sport shop that was on the way home. Dad liked to show me historic pieces; octagonal barrel Winchesters, bolt action rifles from the world wars, and quite a few M-1 Garands and M-1 Carbines that dotted the "Used Gun" racks whenever we drifted in. Tonight would be no exception, and we pulled into the parking lot there around 9 PM or so.
As usual, we walked into the store. We headed to the back, where there was a handgun counter. The guy there knew us, and together we looked over the pistols that were there beneath the glass. One of them was a Mauser handgun. It was not the C-96 "Broomhandle" that was known from "Star Wars" movies and other more recent pop culture appearances, but a small 7.65mm pistol that looked like it could slip into one's pocket. It had angles and corners and the look of a different time. The tag attached to it read "1902," and it looked almost impossibly old. There was a small leather holster with it, fit to the pistol, dry and cracked, looking just as old, but there all the same.
There was a bit of conversation, and the guy behind the counter got the pistol out of the case. He handed it to my dad, who checked it over, and then it was handed to me.
The moment I took that pistol into my hand, the temperature in the room dropped at least twenty degrees. The hair on my arms went up. The hair on my legs went up, and the hair on the back of my neck went up. I felt someone behind me, and I knew that if I turned around, someone would be standing there. That is the only way to describe it. While my dad and the guy behind the counter kept talking, a conversation I couldn't even hear at that point, I trained the little pistol around the room, at various targets that were set up in the shop, and at the stuffed trophies that were there as well.
The pistol went right between the eyes on the trophies, every time. It went right to the bull's eye of each target, every time. It was like the scene in the original "Robocop" where Peter Weller's computer-enhanced policeman character sees every target in a room, and every one is automatically locked in. There was also a feeling that I was not the only person involved in the aiming. Everywhere the pistol was pointed, it just lined up. Once, twice, again, again.
As my dad and the guy behind the counter came to the end of their conversation, I handed the pistol back. I didn't say much as we walked out of the store. I can still remember the hairs on my legs brushing against my trousers as I walked out, and as I walked into my house about twenty minutes or so later.
I can't say what it was, I can't say what intent may have been there. I can only say that I felt something, and I had never felt it before handling a firearm, nor since. I hope whatever it was found peace out there somewhere.
God Bless.
David
