The Stray Revolver

The first gun I ever held in my life was a large .45 revolver. I was 9 or 10 years old when I discovered it after climbing onto the roof of our house when we still lived in Oakland on 79th & Hillside. Much to my mom’s chagrin, I frequently sat on our roof when I was a child. I did that a lot while thinking. A lot of difficult events brought me to my favorite spot on the roof. I sat there after learning about the murder of my father, the shooting death of our friend Shalim, and when our other friend Icarus was killed by a speeding driver on his way to school one morning.

I spotted the revolver immediately upon climbing onto the roof. It was just lying there unexpectedly like an uninvited, drunk guest crashing on a couch. I was not scared as much as I was curious to what the hell it was doing on our roof. I went over to the gun and carefully picked it up.

I was so nervous about handling a weapon, that I kept my fingers away from the trigger, and even the hammer, because I wanted to avoid even the slightest probability of somehow causing it to fire.

I had once seen an episode of “New York: Undercover” where one of the detectives, after finding a similar gun at a crime scene, opened the weapon to check if it was loaded. I did the same. Who says television teaches a child nothing?