|
pm 6:45 Sunday 8 February 2004
When I was seven years old I went to Camp Timanous in Maine, a
summer camp named after my great grandfather, who liked to pretend
he was an Indian. My mother had recently married my stepfather,
and on some level I could see they were glad to have me out of their
hair for two months.
I was just a little kid, about to go into the third grade. Well,
they taught us archery, riflery, swimming, diving, crafts, ...
you know, things like that. Except I was really good at riflery.
So good, I soon won certificates (and neat medals!) from the National
Rifle Association declaring I was a Junior Marksman, Marksman 2nd
Class, and next summer, Marksman!
There was a very strange thing, though, about the rifle range at
Camp Timanous back in 1953 and 1954. The riflery counselors had
affixed two pyramidal weights to a fishing line and hung it on the
bottom of the target frame, so when you sent the assembly down the
wire to the end of the 50-yard range, the counterweights were supposed
to stop the target from bouncing side-to-side. Except they didn't.
The target would swing one way, the counterweights another, and
the whole assemblage would go haywire for a while, and take about
twenty or thirty seconds to settle down so we could shoot at something
somewhat stationary.
At the end of my second summer at summer camp, where I was always
teased for being ninety-eight percent gullible, announced I was
going to do some research over the winter, and find a better way
to stabilize the target. "I know there's a way," I said.
"I just don't know what it is."
Eight-year-olds have a lot of common sense.
|