Now that summer's officially halfway over, it's time we talked about the thing that always said summertime to me: the lowly squirtgun (and that's just how we spelled it, all one word).
Growing up in the fifties there wasn't a whole lot of variety to be found when it came to water warfare. You had four basic types, and three of them could be found anywhere: the Buck Rogers ray gun type, the tommy gun (which looked great, but usually broke within the first half-hour of mortal combat), and then the one the cool kids had, the Luger style. Lugers were usually cast in a bright green or yellow, but if you could find a black one, you were literally King of the Street, and all the other kids had to bow at your presence. No matter its hue, the Luger squirtgun had a mean and nasty heft, and filled your hand like it was born there.
But there was a fourth type, deadly in its own way, and as rare as neutronium: the Greenie-Meanie. True to their name, Greenie-Meanies were as green as a lime LifeSaver, but their best feature was their compact size. A Greenie-Meanie could easily be concealed in your palm and then, owing to its hellish design, fired covertly. Hence their scarcity.
Teachers (and their pawns, our parents) made sure Greenie-Meanies were hard to find, as they invariably made the last week of school actually bearable (especially when you could nail the teacher’s pet, stupid old Faye Nicholson, right in the back of her neck from eight feet out). So although the guns were rare, if you found one--and could keep it--even a Luger-bearer would make room for you as you passed.
Nowadays we're civilized, of course. A lad (or lass) brings a Greenie-Meanie to school, it's suspension and counseling and much parental wailing. ‘Cause first, yanno, it's shooting little Marty Welch with a stream of water, then it's parking a nine millimeter parabellum round in his brainpain. As Barney Fife used to say, “We have to nip it! Nip it in the bud!” Read More
Growing up in the fifties there wasn't a whole lot of variety to be found when it came to water warfare. You had four basic types, and three of them could be found anywhere: the Buck Rogers ray gun type, the tommy gun (which looked great, but usually broke within the first half-hour of mortal combat), and then the one the cool kids had, the Luger style. Lugers were usually cast in a bright green or yellow, but if you could find a black one, you were literally King of the Street, and all the other kids had to bow at your presence. No matter its hue, the Luger squirtgun had a mean and nasty heft, and filled your hand like it was born there.
But there was a fourth type, deadly in its own way, and as rare as neutronium: the Greenie-Meanie. True to their name, Greenie-Meanies were as green as a lime LifeSaver, but their best feature was their compact size. A Greenie-Meanie could easily be concealed in your palm and then, owing to its hellish design, fired covertly. Hence their scarcity.
Teachers (and their pawns, our parents) made sure Greenie-Meanies were hard to find, as they invariably made the last week of school actually bearable (especially when you could nail the teacher’s pet, stupid old Faye Nicholson, right in the back of her neck from eight feet out). So although the guns were rare, if you found one--and could keep it--even a Luger-bearer would make room for you as you passed.
Nowadays we're civilized, of course. A lad (or lass) brings a Greenie-Meanie to school, it's suspension and counseling and much parental wailing. ‘Cause first, yanno, it's shooting little Marty Welch with a stream of water, then it's parking a nine millimeter parabellum round in his brainpain. As Barney Fife used to say, “We have to nip it! Nip it in the bud!” Read More