Youthful mishaps and toy product testing

When it came to my Mom and toy guns “You’ll shoot your eye out” was just the beginning. 

She was sure that if I played with those “devils toys that glorified killing” I would become a mass murderer of epic proportions, using neighborhood children, innocent babies and little fuzzy kittens for target practice. 

While there were certainly some children in my neighborhood that should have been used for target practice, I never really thought of it until she put the idea into my head.

I knew she would never buy me a gun, even if it was just a toy. So when I was about ten or eleven, I devised a plan to finance my very first gun. At the risk of stunted growth and future weak bones, I planned on boycotting milk for lunch. By saving the milk money my Mom gave me for school lunch, I was sure to be able to own my very own gun, eventually. Being impatient, and a cheapskate, I bought the first gun I had enough money for. It was a small, toy derringer gun...part of a key chain, I think.  It had small, soft plastic bullets, that shot out when you fired it with caps. Note the name.

I used to line up my little green plastic army men and shoot away at them. 

The gun was not the least bit accurate, but it’s hard to miss when your firing into a crowd. The gun was tiny and designed to shoot the bullets with caps.  
A cap. 
One per bullet. 

At least that was what was intended. I don't now if they still make them but there used to be caps that we called greenie caps. Yes, they were green but they came on a sheet. 

Not the red ones you took a whole roll of and hit them with a hammer on the sidewalk to make small explosions that sent concrete specks into your eyes. 

The greenie caps peeled off and you could stick them in your gun, or on things, as desired. 

Well, I got the great idea of sticking them on this derringer until I couldn’t fit any more of them in the cap area. 

                                Kids, do not try this at home! 

I really figured the first cap would pop and the rest would fizzle. I carefully aimed, and squeezed the trigger. 

A bomb went off in my hand. The sound inside the room was deafening. I could hear the soft plastic bullet ricochet back and forth across the room about three times, each time barely missing me. 

When the acrid smelling smoke cleared, and there was plenty of it, I looked at the charred mass of metal in my hand. The pistol had split at the seam and all the nice chrome was black. 

I soon heard my Moms worried voice exclaim up the stairs, "What was that?" 

"Nothing Mom!" I called back as I opened the windows and tried to fan the smoke out, dropping the now useless gun in the trash can.

I am proud to say that I am now over 50 years old and have never shot any fuzzy kittens or neighborhood children. Even though I have known some I wished I had.