A Tiny Essay: Air Guns and Little Shits

　Average kid’s awakening to air guns starts around third grade. That’s about the age when you can finally get your hands on those 3$ plastic air guns they sell at candy shops and festival booths. At first you get all hyped just from holding a “pistol,” but in the end, it’s 300 yen. The cheap spring just fwip-launches the BBs, and even at point-blank range it can barely punch through a flyer. You mess around shooting at each other and screaming for maybe ten minutes, then get bored. Sadly, compared to that kind of kiddie toy, Smash Bros. Melee or Naruto fighting games are about five hundred million times more fun.

　But the true power of air guns doesn’t lie in the 3$tier. In the toy corner at Jusco, there were air guns in the 15$–30$ yen range, with a texture at least vaguely reminiscent of a real handgun. From a distance, even an adult might have trouble telling if it’s real or fake. We scraped together our allowances and somehow all managed to buy a 15$ model each.

　The jackpot was the Desert Eagle knockoff—the kind of handgun everyone pictures when they hear the word “pistol.” Easy-to-understand construction, perfectly acceptable power, and above all, simply cool. Of course, there were always kids who got cocky and went straight for the 30$ revolvers or machine guns. Naturally, I was on the revolver side. I’m pretty sure it was because I’d just watched some Lupin III TV special.

　As air guns, both the revolver and machine gun were kinda meh. Even though we were just firing BBs, loading a revolver was a pain, and it had less range than the Desert Eagle. For the “sniper game” where we shot at paper targets tied to a tree (the ones that came in the box), it was clearly at a disadvantage. Cheap toy machine guns were even worse—when you pulled the trigger, the BBs dribbled out jobobobo with all the force of a weak stream of pee. Even as kids, we learned that “simple is best.”

　Anyway, a 15$ air gun hurts. Compared to the 3$ toy, it’s about a hundred times more painful. Since we were little shits, we sometimes got carried away and shot our friends, but they’d usually jump up and start yelling, and we’d realize “Okay, this is actually bad…” and quietly decide it was taboo.

　Every once in a while, though, there’d be some tough bastard who kept charging even under air-gun fire, and we’d call him the Terminator. A third-grader Terminator advancing while getting shot at with an air gun was genuinely terrifying. I don’t remember why we started shooting him in the first place. I’ll never know if he was just gritting his teeth like Yujiro Hanma or if it truly didn’t hurt him. Later, he got picked to represent the school in a swimming competition, so he was probably a true son of the sea—very Okinawa.

　Strangely enough, even among us broke Okinawan brats, there was always at least one kid who was relatively well-off—a sort of Suneo type. One day, that kid brought not an air gun, but a gas gun. One of the several-tens-of-thousands-of-yen kind. Where did he even get it?

　Gas guns are supposed to be 18+ only, so they’re not sold to kids, and they’re way out of our price range anyway. It must have been his dad’s or his big brother’s. We all trembled at the arrival of this unknown destructive power. As the name suggests, a gas gun fires using gas pressure. Even if an air gun hurts, it’s still just a spring pushing a BB. The range and power aren’t even in the same league.

　We all watched as he tested it on empty cans. Instead of just denting them, it punched clean holes straight through. When he shot a can filled with water, the BB pierced it and a little stream poured out of the bullet hole, like blood spilling from a wound. At that moment, we intuitively understood: “This is not something a minor should own.”

　And yet, mysteriously, we were all thinking the same thing:

“I wonder how much it would hurt to shoot a person with this.”

　We knew perfectly well how dangerous it was, but curiosity still got the better of us.

　Naturally, we started playing rock–paper–scissors. The loser would get to experience the full power of the gas gun. Of course nobody wanted that, but we were also convinced someone had to test it. Under the clear Okinawan sky, a bunch of brats playing rock–paper–scissors in front of a loaded gun looked exactly like a scene from Sonatine. Eventually someone lost, and he silently turned his back to the wall. He’d at least calculated that taking it in the butt, where the skin is thick, wouldn’t kill him. Suneo took aim with the gas gun, and the tension in the air spiked. After the bang came the shriek. When we shot each other with air guns we’d jump around and scream, but when the gas gun hit, the loser just let out a dull grunt and collapsed. There wasn’t even energy left to hop around. Tears welled up in his eyes.

　Thinking, “Okay, this is no joke,” we somehow all arrived at the same conclusion again:

“If only one guy has to go through this, that’s way too cruel. Our honor as men would be ruined.”

　For some reason, everyone agreed. We also all silently decided that Suneo, as the owner of the gas gun and our designated sniper, didn’t have to get shot. Looking back as an adult, I have no idea why we all instinctively thought that was fair. I can kind of understand the “let’s share the pain” mentality, but still.

　In the end, we all lined up side by side and turned our backs to the gas gun. It must’ve looked exactly like an execution scene from wartime. Suneo took careful aim at each of our butts in turn. I still remember how unbelievably painful it was. No one even had the strength to scream; we just crouched down and cried in silence. It was a self-study scene of little shits enduring pain with tears in their eyes. I also clearly remember Suneo laughing at our suffering. And strangely, rather than getting angry, we all sort of accepted it: “Well, that’s what rich kids are like.” If it weren’t for him, we never would’ve had a chance to even touch a gas gun, so in a twisted way we were all kind of grateful. That’s childhood logic for you—completely insane.

　After going through that little hell, we naturally got bored of air guns altogether. Our allowances got redirected into Yu-Gi-Oh and Duel Masters cards, and when we wanted to run around, we just played dodgeball like normal kids. Despite everything we went through, nobody cared about air or gas guns anymore. Children’s curiosity moves faster than a gas-gun BB.