The Neighborhood Boys: Backstory

A little backstory.

Last weekend, I was walking down my street to get some coffee. I passed by a few neighborhood boys (early elementary school age) who were just hanging out on their front steps. They had these pop-guns, the kind that shoot out rubber darts that stick to windows if you lick the ends. But without the darts. They just had the guns.

(Sidenote: these are the kids whose father put up that awesome basketball goal for them, a few weeks back.)

So I’m walking by and as they aim their guns at me, I hold my hands up in the air. They let me pass, but one of them shoots at me. I pretend to get hit and swing by head hard to the right. But then I smile and reach for my mouth, and pretend to pull out the bullet that I had so skillfully caught with my teeth. I show this to the kid and drop the bullet on the ground in front of him.

He seems nonplussed. However, as I walk a bit farther, I hear the *pop* of their guns go off yet again. And I thought to myself, “Those little fuckers shot me in the back!”

“Whatever,” I think to myself, “they’re a bunch of kids and I’m an adult. Besides… they only grazed me.”

I walk down to the end of the block, get my coffee, and again, on my way home, they hold me up. I stick up my arms, and after walking a bit farther… THEY SHOOT ME IN THE BACK AGAIN!

This time, I turn around and tell them it was totally unfair for them to shoot someone in the back. We play-argued a bit, and after making my point… I walked away.

As I’m walking, I hear the *click* of their guns getting cocked up again, and right as they fire, I dodge to the left. I hear the boys start to laugh, and each time they shoot, I dodge again. I yell back to them that they’ve missed me, and in a flash they’re screaming and running down the sidewalk to chase me.

They get to about a foot from me, and start shooting. I tell them that I can’t believe they’re all such terrible shots, and how I can’t understand how they can miss me from so close.

After a bit, they stopped shooting and we fell to talking. They asked me which house was mine, and asked if that was my dog they had seen in the yard (Fairbanks is not my dog, as much as I would like that to the case. He belongs to Ted, my landlord).

Eventually, I tell them I need to go and say goodbye. I walked down the steps and wave to them. As I turned, I could have sworn one of them tried to shoot me in the back again.