An unexplained urge

At age 8, my parents dressed me up as a cap-pistol John-Wayne-style Western gunfighter, but you can tell from my expression that I was the unlikeliest of warriors, yet now I have a sudden urge to hold an honest-to-god real gun in my hand.

At age 16, I didn’t fight back when, after scrapping for a rebound, the rival center, Joey Ray, punched me square in the mouth, initiating the slow death of the front tooth, now dark, I wear to this day, yet I have a sudden urge to fire a gun.

If I had been drafted in my 20s into the Vietnam War in which fellow classmate “Little Tommy” Dineen lost his life to a trip mine, I probably would have applied for conscientious objector status, yet now I have a sudden urge to feel a gun’s explosive power.

For a half-century, I rhapsodized over Henry David Thoreau’s classic “Civil Disobedience” essay in my American lit courses, yet now I have a sudden urge to have a palpable sense of a gun’s lethal power.

In high spirits, I have rung cow bells, waved signs, and sung songs at Mondays at Mackenzie’s, yet now I have a sudden urge to feel what it’s like to point a destructive weapon at a target.

One of my favorite places on Earth is that “Port of Call for Love, Light, and Peace,” Columcille Megalith Park in Bangor, yet now I have a sudden urge to experience a line of sight from the tip of a gun’s barrel to an object.

On December 13th I walked 6 of the 10 miles of the annual Peace Walk (senior moment #30) from Nazareth to Bethlehem (eating the dust of fellow octogenarian Mimi part of that way), yet now I have a sudden urge to see whether, with gun in hand, I could choose not to use it.

I have a Buddha in my backyard, yet now I have a sudden urge to better understand what makes guns physically attractive to many people.

I’ve asked to have Arlo Guthrie’s “My Peace” played at my viewing, probably at Connell’s, yet now I am aware of the Relic Hunter Firing Line in Coplay where I will probably ask for the Dirty Harry “Make My Day” model.

I am a Quaker, committed to nonviolence, yet I want to at least have a faint taste of the thrill or chill of firing a gun.

I can’t say (yet) where this sudden urge comes from.

I can only report on it.

Stay tuned.