8th June, 2010
It was my birthday yesterday! To celebrate, The Boy took me to a gun range.
What the !@&# you say? To a gun range? That is indie stationery designer unbecoming!
To be clear, I’m not some kind of gun lovin’ nut that lives in a backwoods trailer. No Deliverance here! I’m just the kinda person who’s curious about most things and enjoy trying things that I’ve never done before. So for my birthday I thought it a good time to shoot my first piece of firearm.
Growing up, my uncle the hunter always had guns in the house. Let me stress that this is suburban Calgary we’re talking about, not some city limit trailer park. Our pastel colored house was not on wheels and we all had indoor plumbing.
My mild mannered uncle Ray made his own bullets, set up a make-shift gun range in our basement and would go live hunting on the weekends. There had been times where I’d come home, pull up in the drive way and open the garage door, to find him inside the garage wearing a bloody apron, dismembering some antlered furry thing with a big meat cleaver.
I would close the garage door quickly so the neighbours don’t see our Asian Hannibal Lecter. Oh the sweet memories! I miss you Uncle Ray, and thanks for turning me into a vegetarian.
Anyways I was never allowed to touch his guns and rifles and he wouldn’t take me to the gun range with him either. The curiosity stayed with me all these years.
So off we go to the gun range yesterday like a couple of city slickers. I couldn’t be more thrilled when I found out that their targets had zombies on them! Great practice for the Zombie Apocalypse training don’t you think?
We chose a 9mm with 50 rounds of ammo ‘cos the instructor said anything less would be like shooting a pea shooter. The weight of the gun surprised me, just holding it made realize that this thing is for real and not to be taken lightly.
My first shot… whamo! The recoil knocked me back a couple steps but I shot the zombie right between the eyes! I knew I was a natural!
If that had been a real zombie, I probably would’ve still taken the time to throw my hands up in the air to celebrate. Woohoo!
The Boy did pretty good also, I guess I’ll keep him on my zombie team!
I want to say that it was wicked fun but it seems a little inappropriate to describe shooting a firearm as fun (it was fun!). They have classes you can take for obtaining a firearm license but that’s not my intention here. I was just satisfying a curiosity and now that I have I can move on.
Maybe next year I’ll see if I can go milk a cow. Have you ever milked a cow before? I haven’t! I wonder what that’s like…
