Notes from a small pond: Robbed
November 29, 2019
When I was 7, my Gramps let me hold a 1903 Colt .45 six-shooter revolver and shoot it at a line of Olympia beer cans he’d arranged on the branch of an oak tree somewhere out in the Ditchbanks. I hit five out of six. Gramps was ecstatic. The noise and the kick didn’t scare me at all. Missing the cans on the branch did. My dad was there. It was 1972.
A bunch of years later, on my 16th birthday, Gramps gave me that revolver, saying: “Don’t ever use it unless you’re gonna use it, except on cans.”
I understood. I never used it. Except on cans.
By the time 2005 arrived, my life was n...
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