Casual observers may by now be aware of a habit of mine, my effort to have Nerf weapons near me at all times. Let me explain this, for it may not be what you think.
I've loved Nerf guns for a very long time, since I was young, asking on my fifth christmas for an Ultimator bazooka that I'd hide under a cape and unleash on the foes I didn't have, barring, of course, the kid next-door that was always renowned to be a "bully" but I can't recall ever actually being on his bad side. All I know is: the kid did what the fuck he wanted from day. That idea about my imaginary assassins, it never really sunk in. Every year some new and fantastic way of getting the drop on those other kids that were never there, because god damn it the TV said so. You believed that, you really did, that a bunch of kids would surround you and you'd just whip out a huge purple plastic people-pulverizer and they run in terror of an orange foam missile. Or maybe it did sink in, after all, I didn't stop believing the TV for a long time.
I still buy Nerf guns. I know damn well I'll never use them on anything other than walls and mirrors, maybe the stupid Pulp Fiction poster I STILL haven't taken down. Fuck it, that's happening now.
The Shins just pointed out to me that it's time for me to get some outlandish convictions now, that I'm old enough, I'm Golden. I guess that's so. I don't feel ready to commit to anything, but this not knowing is getting old.
Right now there are ten Nerf guns within a yard radius of my current seated position. They range from sawn-off shotguns and sniper rifles to a six-simultaneous dart assault rifle and one of those new disc guns, The Vigilon, it's called.
The Vigilon, by the way, is a huge fuck off handgun worthy of Judge Dredd, colored chartreuse, grey, and orange. Is it any wonder I love it? It's just comically large in all the wrong places. Everyone's got that problem to some extent, though some people have it far worse than others. I think I look like an absurd combination of features with a forehead that seems to have a tilt all its own. I don't think I'm ugly, but these days I'm not too happy with the way I look. I slid into the status of eunuch in the past few months. Things have changed. I've gained something of a pot belly, if you can believe it.
To this day, I have only fired one of these Nerf guns at a living creature. The sniper rifle, from the roof, at my sister. Some of them only get fired a handful of times in a year, a couple, including the latest missile launcher, haven't been fired since my family moved to this house, before I placed them on a shelf to be forever admired. It's so absurd, you'd agree, to spend so much precious material wealth for a tool whose purpose is never fulfilled, but I still do it, still stray to the left side of Wal Mart every season and fall in love with another neon colored bit of plastic to gather dust on my surfaces.
It's heart-breaking, really, I won't deny it. If you've got the right buzz on, you can feel the existential angst as soon as you open the door to my room, it smells like fluid leaking from the holes in my ears, it feels so heavy, it forces your shoulders down as you enter, makes you stoop, makes you look up and hurt your neck, look like a vulture.
I want to present to you an alternate explanation.
What I'm doing is parody, satire, social commentary. I won't bullshit you and say that's always been my intention, oh no, I stumbled onto this just now, since I'm still without work, sitting in the house my parents bought, almost two years after graduating from the school they payed for, they toiled for, eating the food they buy, still attached at the hip, still wriggling to the Old Flesh Noose. I don't contribute to Society and I won't Obey Society, I won't kill when you say "kill," I won't maim when you try to make me dig that. I won't take advantage of lesser beings, if such a thing exists. I refuse to interject myself into an act of such selfish pig-headedness as thrusting myself into a life that is not my own and forever altering it. I therefore have no business in owning any sort of weapon, unless I intend to forever alter myself.
My psychiatrist describes this as a "dark place," I think. She uses other words, of course, but it always comes back to it being a place, and a chemically correctable place to boot... Sometimes I buy it.
My Nerf guns are a colossal pair of fingers, a smarmy sneer at the lovers of hate, a defense against imaginary foes and mirrors, a ticking time bomb. It's the defiance in me, the part of me that distrusts anyone that wears a suit, fashion-conscious as that is. It's what's right and wrong about me, my closest friend and my most hated enemy.
My Nerf guns are my answer to Society: I'll play along when it suits me; and even then you won't get cooperation.
I don't like my answer too much. I'm working on changing it, taking it back, but it's already been said; can't redo, must rebuild. I believe I should be an active, helpful member of society, I just don't want to, and that's selfish pig-headedness.
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