Sunday - June 21 - 2009
Sponsor: Carol Facilitators: Lina, Bachir, Walid, Ghada
He slyly took it out of his pocket and showed it to me with cunning smeared all over his face. Immediately, he took me back 20 plus years – and suddently I was 9 again. In fact, I had to look again, more closely, just to be sure. And indeed, it was what I thought it was. My face lit up as my mind flooded with memories and flashed with images. He then quickly snuck it back into his pocket. I guess adults in his life weren’t big fans of him playing around with it. Something I knew all too well as a child.
It was a ring of caps – for a cap gun. Back in the day they used to come in a red paper roll I remember. Then a bit later on in my childhood the “technology” in cap-making apparently became a bit more advanced, when suddenly they started selling these new red plastic rings of caps in the candy stores. The red rings of caps assisted in making the cap-gun look more real, as you didn’t have a red paper roll streaming out the back of the gun anymore. As well, loading these red ring caps into the cap-gun felt like loading real bullets into a real revolver – or so we must have thought, as kids.
However, as children my Mother wouldn’t let my siblings and I play with toy guns. So, usually, when we’d get our hands on these caps, we’d have to resort to hitting them with a rock to make the gun powder explode. And I remember we’d always have to pop our explosive caps somewhere in secret, because for some reason, adults in the 1980’s, living in my neighborhood anyway, thought that popping caps with stones was like playing with, well… fire.
This day though, with this boy, I took into my own hands to change the history for boys, caps, and the stance adults took on them.
I put my hand out. Confused, and almost ashamed, he placed the red ring in my palm.
I squatted down by a flat stone. Curious, he soon bent down to join me. As I picked up another stone the expression on his face jumped.
I took the ring of caps and started smashing it with the rock. “Woooh!” he’d yelp after each smokey bang.
I then handed him the stone – and history was in the making.
On his face I read an expression, such as one he’d have if the school principal noticed him chewing gum, but simply just smiled, and kept on walking on past him down the corridor. The boy looked up at me, eyebrows scrunched and posed, as if to say, “You’re actually permitting me to do this?” I nodded my head.
He began popping the caps. With great focus and great care, sparks flew, smoke rose, and bangs echoed. The boy was being 9. And watching him hit these caps with the stone, I noticed that he was 9 in every sort of way.
And it was in that moment when I realized that he and I were making our own little history. For that tiny moment, I made it okay for a kid to play with caps filled with gun powder. And for that moment I couldn’t help but feel a certain energy between me, him, and these vintage red ring caps that I used to have to secretly play with when I was his age. It was one mixed with love and danger; and one simply just about letting a boy be a boy. I really wanted to make that, being a boy, alright for him.
For that tiny moment I was 9 years old again, with him – and I didn’t want to leave. I wasn’t ready to revert back to being responsible. I was prepared to stay 9 with him and skip back down to the penny candy store with him to buy more caps when we finished. This is where I wanted to stay with him.
But, as the last of the caps were finishing, and understanding that my glimpse back in time was about to end, I desperately readied the camera to at least capture a slice of this tiny moment of our neat little “mini-history” together.
And as I bend down for a close-up snapshot, a spark flung up and hit me on the forehead.
I’m still not sure if it’s my Mom or his Mom I’d rather not have read this entry.
