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Originally Posted by Rain Man
I have to make jokes about guns. When I was seven years old, some people broke into our house. They were on drugs or something, and they beat us up and then they forced us to play Russian roulette with a revolver. I still remember that revolver, because it looked a lot like a toy one that I had at the time. My mom was first, and she lasted three shots, and then my dad went on the first one. The sweat was dripping down the side of his head when they held the gun up, because our hands were all tied behind our backs so they pulled the trigger for us. First shot - bad luck, I guess. My oldest brother Tom was next. He was kind of pudgy and they said that was why. Then it was Kenny. I don't really remember how many pulls of the trigger it took for them, because everything was going real fast for me by then. I guess by that time the neighbors had heard and called the police, because right as they put the gun to my head for the first pull, a bunch of police officers busted down the door. You would have thought that there would have been a shootout, but there wasn't. The bad people just dropped the gun and the police took them away while I sat there on the floor with my hands tied behind my back watching it all and not even thinking about leaving or moving. The funny thing was that no one said a word to me afterward. They just moved around and checked pulses and talked to themselves, and I just sat there, and I had a cold spot on the side of my head where the gun barrel had been. We had a gold shag carpet, and it turned orange, and I remember thinking that it was a really beautiful orange, almost an apricot when the light hit it. Well, my aunt and uncle picked me up, and I had a lot of trouble with guns after that - really freaked me out, even if it was just on TV - and finally the therapist took me to a hypnotist who trained me to think of guns as just being those old joke guns where, when you pulled the trigger, a little flag came out and said "BANG!" That's how I think about guns now - BANG! Not a bunch of drugged up hippies murdering everyone I loved while I was helpless to do anything about it. So I apologize if you all think I'm being light about this stuff, but it's a product of who I am.
As for the napalm stuff, remember that kid on the left side of that picture? Well, you should know that all of this stuff happened in 1970, and my Aunt Phuong and Uncle Tran lived in a small village in Vietnam at the time...
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