WHEN I WAS A KID

WHEN I WAS A KID

When I was a kid, one of the really fun things the kids in my neighborhood did every summer was have pea shooter wars. The little local grocery store sold pea shooters. They were just heavy duty straws. Instead of shooting dried peas, as the name would suggest, we shot pinto beans. You could buy a whole bag for a dime or so. You had to make sure you got the right size bean for your shooter. Each kid would put a handful in their mouth and stuff the rest of the bag in their pants. You could shoot them far and they would really hurt if they hit you. A lot of the time we would just take target practice. Sometimes, we'd see if we could hit a bird or maybe hit a dog in the butt. If you kept the beans in your mouth too long, they would get soft. You didn't want that to happen. Of course, our mothers would warn that you could put out an eye, but we didn't heed that silliness. No one would ever think of letting your child do something like this today. I don't know how we survived.