PERSONAL NARRATIVE
She smiled. She seemed to be pleased with the arrangement. Her
son was an A student, and she got to give him what he wanted:
A semi-automatic weapon. An assault rifle. Designed for combat.
bearing arms. But theirs…I wasn’t telling them what
to believe, but having firearms in a house with chil-
dren wasn’t okay with me. Especially if those guns
were being carried, armed, and in a bag.
I began telling other parents about this concealed
gun story but was met with tepid indifference. Sure,
they’d say, lots of people have guns. I have one in my
closet. Or my dad has a locked safe in his garage. Or
we have a couple we keep just for emergencies. As
though an emergency kit should come stocked with
Band-Aids, aspirin, and a 9mm.
Ok, I thought. I hear you. But I politely disagree.
My son and I spent a lot of time doing activities that
kept us too busy for friends that summer, and the
following September marked the first year of middle
school—a place with a hundred new kids who didn’t
know my son’s more prickly side. I was convinced
he’d meet someone new. Someone without guns.
Someone who bathed and used tissues and who
maybe liked to ride bikes.
But he didn’t.
Instead, they reconnected despite not sharing any
of the same classes or lunch hours. I relented and
said yes to the boy coming over. I thought that was a
good compromise. He could come to our house, and
I wouldn’t have to ban his openly. Win, win.
Except he talked only about getting his own rifle.
About going hunting. About target practice in the
yard. He was 12.
He wanted to play first shooter games on the com-
puter. When my son tried to get him interested in Mi-
necraft he chose to play the laptop instead. On the
other side of the room. Good, I thought. Maybe they
were finally drifting apart. But the thing about my
son’s brain is that it works really well to connect facts
and ideas, but it’s terrible at reading people. He had
no idea they weren’t playing together. To him, noth-
ing had changed.
48 | Autism Parenting Magazine | Issue 72
At pick-up time his mom asked me how my son liked
middle school. Asked me how his grades were. She
told me that her son was finally getting As. She asked
if I wanted to know how she kept him motivated, fo-
cused. “He and his dad have this deal,” she said, “for
every A he brings home, he gets one more piece of
an AK47.” She smiled. She seemed to be pleased with
the arrangement. Her son was an A student, and she
got to give him what he wanted: A semi-automatic
weapon. An assault rifle. Designed for combat.
What would a 12-year-old boy do with it? What would
anyone do? What image did she hold in her mind
when she saw her son using it? Because in my mind, I
saw him standing on a tower over a crowd of people.
I saw him walking into a school cafeteria. I saw him
point that gun at all the people who called him weird
or poor or told him he smelled like dirt.
I looked at his mother with fresh eyes. She had the
same yellowed skin as her son. She wore the same
tired jeans. I wondered when they had last bathed.
Or hugged. I wondered how the inside of their house
felt when no one was looking. Was there love in that
house alongside the neglect? Was there abuse?
My sister thought that maybe he kept his shoes and
clothes on because he felt like he always had to be
ready to run.
I hadn’t thought of that. We sat there in silence for a
few minutes, my sister and I, later. After they left.
“Is this how mass shooters are made?” I asked her.
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe this is exactly how they’re
made.”
Dacia Price lives in Seattle WA with her two boys and
their dog, rabbits, and sometimes chickens. When she’s
not writing she can usually be found on a mountain
peak or in a vineyard. Her short stories and creative
nonfiction can be read in Pacifica Literary Review,
Toasted Cheese, and Storm Cellar.
Facebook: www.facebook.com/dacia.price.9
Blog: www.thetitleofmynextbook.wordpress.com