Have I ever told you that Mark thinks American children are all trained, from the age of five, in all the arts of war and battle? Yeah, it’s true. Little soldiers, the whole lot of them. I’m not sure where he gets it. But he insists emphatically that it’s so.
Anyway, if he could have seen Kimmie and I on the path the other day, he might have known we’re taught more to fear guns than how to shoot them.
We came up behind our dear, kooky neighbor Ibiong on the path, and she swung around to give us an excited hello. Well, she had a AK-47 slung across her chest, so our natural response was to duck. Not from fear, just from instinct. You never point a loaded gun at someone, right? Not even a play gun. Any child knows that.
Imagine every mother’s terror at skinny little Ibiong swingin’ this thing around like it’s no big deal. She’d repeatedly turn around to say something to us as we walked, and we’d swoop down out of the line of fire. (More then, I’ll admit, for humor than anything else.) She really got a kick out of it. She insisted she didn’t know how to shoot it, so we shouldn’t be afraid. She fiddled with the trigger a bit, in an attempt to demonstrate her ignorance. I do believe at that point we nearly flung ourselves into the bushes. A few times when she’d turn around, she’d plug the end of the barrel with her index finger. You know, ‘cause then it’s not at all dangerous.
We taught her how to say “I gotta gun” in English. She took to saying “gun, gun-gun-gun-gun,” as if it were the shooting sound. This woman is hilarious; I wish I could even explain it.
Anyway, our adventure ended when she stepped off the path to greet someone and we dashed by. She laughed after us, “Erruat itia!” (“You’re escaping!”)
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