Day 18 - Nerf Gun (Throw)

Dats (age 9) brought a nerf gun (from his nerf gun collection) to me because it was jammed.  It's one of those guns that spans about two feet in length and fires multiple darts from a cartridge.  I worked on that sucker for at least 45 minutes.  I removed about ten tiny screws but still got nowhere near the problem - the part that was jammed was stuck in place over a key screw.   It's hard for a dad to admit when he can't fix something!  But in defeat, there was this consolation:  one more thing out of my house.

After wasting so much time on that hunk of plastic, I took relish in breaking pieces off the barrel of the gun before I tossed all the pieces into the trash can.  It brought back a childhood memory.  It's not a particularly pleasant memory, but it was a valuable lesson that stuck with me.  I was maybe 7 or 8 at the time and my brothers and I had one unjammed dart gun between us.  The darts were the pre-nerf type which were just orange plastic sticks with a suction cup at the lead end.  I recall that we were in the kitchen having a heated disagreement over whose turn it was to use the gun. 

Now at 42 I can completely empathize and even admire my dad's solution, but at the time it completely shocked us all silent and struck a certain level of fear in us ... but it did succeed in preventing similar disagreements (at least within dad's earshot) for months to come.  Dad walked into the room after several minutes of our fight, asked for the gun, examined it briefly, and dropped it to the kitchen floor.  He didn't play detective or flip a coin; he dropped it to the floor.  As his boys stood in a circle around him gawking, he taught us a lesson in problem-solving.  He brought the heel of his foot down on top of that gun with the full force of his 6'5" German-farmer-type frame. leaving only quarter-sized fragments of orange plastic behind ... which he told us to clean up.  Then he turned and walked away. 

Without lecturing us, dad taught us a lesson that I have tried to pass on to my kids.  It is best summed up in a bumper sticker I once saw ... maybe you've seen it too:  "LOVE people - USE things".  I love that slogan because it's a masterful use of language:  in four words it conveys a profound, positive life lesson while also implying the negative - we tend to do the reverse.  Why do I have to keep relearning this lesson throughout my life, even as I teach it to my kids??