My Christmas Story

I have no doubt that everyone and their uncle has seen the movie "A Christmas Story", especially considering that its been on a 24 hour loop every Christmas day for the last 10 years or so. Bearing that in mind I still love the damn movie. When Christmas rolls around every year, I can't wait to catch at least one running of the movie, and often watch it 3 or 4 times just out of pure boredom. Every time I watch it however, I am reminded of the Christmas that I received my first BB gun - which just so happened to be a Red Rider.

If I remember the build up to that Christmas correctly, it involved a lot of begging and pleading on my part in an attempt to cajole my parents into the benefits of "Santa" getting me a BB gun that Christmas. You see it was simply unfair for me to NOT have a BB gun as many of my friends already had received guns of their own and were running around our neighborhood killing every Sparrow, Robin and Black Bird they could find, as well as the occasional rabbit and squirrel. If they could have a BB gun, why the hell shouldn't I have one as well? Frankly it pissed me right off, and I voiced that opinion frequently.

In the days leading up to Christmas I began to leave notes for "Santa" randomly lying around the house, the only thing on the list was always a BB gun. Simply put, I would not be satisfied with all the presents in the world if one of them was not a BB gun. I shit you not when I say the entire holiday season that year went down almost as if my parents had meant to reenact the movie "A Christmas Story". Every time I asked for the gun, my mother told me that age old rebuttal, "You'll shoot your eye out." I was appalled. I had seen the movie of course, I had seen that fat little puke shoot his eye out time and time again; but being just a 3rd grader myself, I knew the major problem with what had happened in the movie you see. Any idiot worth his salt never shot at a paper target hung in front of a piece of sheet metal! That stupid kid deserved to have the BB ricochet and hit him in the eye, he just got lucky he was wearing glasses. It still pisses me off to this day, that little fucker ruined the ownership of a BB gun for so many kids after him just by not using common sense.

Anyway...

Christmas day came and like I said, it seemed like the whole thing was being played right out of the movie script. My brother Ian and I came downstairs in the morning to the most spectacular pile of presents we had ever seen, there were gifts everywhere! As we searched about the tree trying to see what we all had, separating the presents with our name on them, it slowly became quite clear that I had not been given a BB gun.

I was heartbroken.

The rest of the gift opening went off as expected, lots of frothing at the mouth and tearing of paper, screams of delight and smiles all around. As the gifts dwindled to almost nothing I didn't even notice my dad get up from his chair to "get another cup of coffee" much less see him return with not one but two long rectangular shaped presents and slide them behind the tree. My brothers and I were busy playing with all the new stuff we got as well as checking out each others presents when my dad mentioned something about the other two presents still under the tree. I'm not sure but I think a little pee came out as we both turned to see what lay in wait for us in that wrapping paper.

At this point it should be mentioned that my dad did stop us and say something or other about how we had to be more responsible with this present than we had with anything else we had ever received and if we ever blah, blah, blah. I'm not sure about Ian, but I know that I was pretty much frothing at the mouth by the time we were given the okay to open the damn things and I'm sure when we did it looked a little like rabid dogs eating babies covered in hot chocolate. I have to admit I was not as fond of the gun when I first saw it; you see many of my friends had pellet guns that involved several pumps to load and were far more powerful than a simple BB gun. In the long run, beggars can't be choosers and this beggar wanted A gun, it didn't matter what kind as long as it could kill.

No sooner did we have the guns open than we were loading them and taking them out to shoot. Just a couple of shots were all we were allowed however, because we had to load up our stuff and head out to my grandparents farm for the Koenig family Christmas. Of course, I took my gun as did Ian, thinking there would be plenty of things to have target practice on at the farm. Oh, and we would also be able to hold the guns over our cousins heads as many of them lived in bigger towns and couldn't have BB guns.

When we got out the farm the scene unfolded pretty much as expected, upon learning we had Red Rider BB guns everyone wanted to shoot them and we being the owners of said guns were Gods among children, weilding our newfound power with an iron fist. No one under Ian's age was allowed to shoot his gun, likewise with my age and gun. That left only 3 people to shoot besides me and Ian and a good number more to watch and complain. We were forced to wait to begin the assault on all things living until after dinner and the other gift opening of sweatpants and the like from the grandparents and the excitement was making everyone crazy.

Soon we began walking around the farmhouse shooting at birds and cans and well, whatever the hell we wanted to with the exception of Robins, Cardinals and Wrens; Grandma liked those birds to much to let them die. We shot at anything and everything allowing those in the age range to occasionally shoot as well. The longer we shot, the more the younger cousins bitched that they should be allowed to shoot as well, and none of them bitched more than Davey. Now while present day cousin Dave is a pretty cool guy and one I have shared a beer with on several occasions, Davey - circa 1986 - was wound tighter than a crackhead on payday. That Davey was 6 or 7 and had more energy than 5 kids his age, he also had more nerve.

You see, as I toted my gun around the farm I made sure to keep the tip pointed down or up at all times and after a while the gun started to get heavy. The tip eventually got too low and caught the ground putting a bit of dirt into the barrel and like any good exploding gun fearing rifleman. I had heard the stories (and seen the cartoons to back it up) and I was not about to shoot a gun with dirt in the barrel just to have it blow my face off. At any rate I sat down to clean the dirt out of the barrel completely forgetting whether or not I had cocked the damn thing or if I had placed the safety on it.

That is when Davey made his move.

Quick as he could Davey rushed to the gun and just as I was starting to blow the dirt away he pulled the trigger.

What unfolded next could only be described as the most amazing scene in Koenig family Christmas history. Immediatly realizing what had happened - Davey shooting my gun of course, not so much me getting shot in the mouth - I stood up and punched Davey. I hit him so hard he spun round, fell on his ass and simultaniously pissed his pants and puked into his hand. His brothers Bobby and Danny then set to beating him to within an inch of his life. As this happened, Ian was running into the house to tell everyone what had happened and after I had landed the haymaker I was right on his heels.

When I came into the house there was utter pandimonium. I was immediatly grabbed by my dad as he tilted my head back to look into my mouth. Before he could start however he gasped upon feeling a tiny rock stuck in my hair, you see he thought the BB had gone straight through. I explained that I had spit it out and was allright, I just had a lot of blood in my mouth and wanted to rinse it out. About that time Davey came in bloody, crying and covered in puke and piss, which also had to be explained away.

There isn't a Christmas that goes by that I don't think about how fucking lucky I was that day. A split second sooner or later on that trigger and Davey could have literally shot my eye out or worse.

Yep, that's my fucking luck.