My grandfather got me a slingshot, and I, being the kind of kid I was, immediately set about improving the ammunition. I’d ask for money for the grocery store, head straight for the toy aisle, and come back with a bag of those cheap glass marbles. I’d put them in the freezer overnight until they were cold as a banker’s heart.
Then I’d boil a pot of water, wait until it was bubbling like crazy, and drop the frozen marbles in. You’d hear it through the pot: crack… crack-crack… tic-crack. A madman’s experiment. The sudden change in temperature would shatter them from the inside out, filling them with a beautiful, chaotic web of internal fractures. The point of all this? When you shot one from the slingshot and it hit something solid, it didn’t just bounce off. It exploded into a thousand tiny fragments of glass.
It was a hot day. My grandmother’s house was a chalky white with wet, red trim. An overgrown orange tree from next door drooped over the white fence. My grandfather sat outside under the carport, in his undershirt, what they used to call a “wife-beater.” They had a three-car garage, but it was way in the back, filled to the gills with my uncle’s old junk. The carport was where life happened.
He would park his car there, a new vehicle he’d just bought after a wreck. He was proud of it, kept it clean, sprayed that shiny shit on the tires. But there was this pesty blue jay, a real bastard of a bird. It would land on the driver’s side mirror, see its own reflection, and attack it like a mortal enemy. Pecking, shitting, leaving little skid marks all over the new paint job. It pissed my grandfather off to no end.
So on this particular day, I’m in the yard with my slingshot and my exploding marbles, shooting at anything that moved. And the blue jay comes out of nowhere. Lands on the mirror, puffs up his chest, and starts his one-bird war.
My grandfather almost choked on his own spit. He pointed, his voice a low hiss. “There he is, son. There he is.”
Yeah, he called me son. Called me el hombrecito. The little man. Every word of confidence known to man, he fed to me. He took a scared pup out of the kennel and tried to build him into a wolf. He honored me, respected me. And now, he points at his prized car, at this feathered menace, and he says, “Shoot him.”
He was close. Too close. A couple of inches either way and I’d put a spiderweb crack in the windshield for three hundred bucks, or shatter the side mirror for another hundred. The bird was practically standing behind a shield of glass. “No, Grandpa, no way,” I said. “He’s too close to the car.”
“Do it,” he said, his voice quiet, firm. “Do it.”
I pleaded again. “No, he’s right on it.”
But Grandpa pointed. “He’s getting ready to leave.” And he was right. The bird had hopped from the mirror to the rubber trim around the front windshield, looking right at us. My grandfather let out a sharp whistle to get its attention, to freeze it for just a second. It was maybe a six-inch target.
I didn’t think. I pulled one of the fractured marbles from my pocket, slipped it into the leather pouch of the old slingshot, pulled it all the way back past my ear. A quick, clean reflex. I aimed, extended, and let go.
The marble found its target. A direct hit.
The bird didn’t just fall; it exploded. A silent puff of blue feathers and glass dust. The marble had shattered on impact, shredding right through its chest.
My grandfather, a man in his seventies, stood up. And I swear, I’d never seen a man look so proud. It was like watching some old warrior see his son win his first bloody battle. He stood there, a flag of pure, savage excitement in his eyes. “You got him!” he roared. “You got the sonofabitch!”
We walked up to it. A beautiful bird, now just a pile of ruined feathers. In that part of California, a blue jay like that, with its big wings and brilliant blue, it was like shooting down a tiny piece of the sky. It had been tormenting our settlement, our little patch of ownership, and we took care of it.
More importantly, my grandfather had trusted me. And I had delivered. I’ve never hit a three-pointer at the buzzer, never sunk a hole-in-one, never hit a home run. But I know what it must feel like.
Because that’s how that one proud, old man made me feel that day.
Author’s Note:
You look at that story, and on the surface, it’s just a kid killing a bird to make his grandpa happy. Simple. But that’s not it at all, is it?
That story isn’t about a blue jay. It’s about a coronation. A fucked-up, backyard coronation, but a coronation nonetheless.
Think about it. The old man has this one new, clean thing in his life full of junk: that car. It’s his pride. And this bird, this pest, comes every day to shit on it, to peck at it, to remind him that you can’t have anything nice in this world for long before something comes along to ruin it. He’s powerless against this small, daily humiliation.
So he turns to you. The kid with the homemade weapons, the boy with the destructive streak. He doesn’t just ask you to shoot a bird. He hands you the responsibility for defending his own goddamn honor. He’s testing you. He’s seeing if you have the nerve, the skill, the killer instinct to protect the tribe.
And that explosion of pride from him when you made the shot? That roar? That wasn’t just “attaboy.” That was him seeing a piece of himself in you. The part that gets the job done. The part that eliminates the problem with cold, brutal efficiency. In that one moment, with that one shattered bird on the ground, you stopped being the broken kid he took in. You became his heir. You became a man, in his eyes.
You said you never hit a home run or a hole-in-one. Bullshit. You did. That marble was the baseball, the slingshot was the bat, and that old man’s roar was the sound of the whole goddamn stadium. For a kid who’d been kicked out, locked out, and shit on, that kind of moment isn’t just a memory.
It’s a foundation. It’s the first solid piece of ground you ever stood on that you earned yourself.
Author’s Notes:
You look at that story, and on the surface, it’s just a kid killing a bird to make his grandpa happy. Simple. But that’s not it at all, is it?
That story isn’t about a blue jay. It’s about a coronation. A fucked-up, backyard coronation, but a coronation nonetheless.
Think about it. The old man has this one new, clean thing in his life full of junk: that car. It’s his pride. And this bird, this pest, comes every day to shit on it, to peck at it, to remind him that you can’t have anything nice in this world for long before something comes along to ruin it. He’s powerless against this small, daily humiliation.
So he turns to you. The kid with the homemade weapons, the boy with the destructive streak. He doesn’t just ask you to shoot a bird. He hands you the responsibility for defending his own goddamn honor. He’s testing you. He’s seeing if you have the nerve, the skill, the killer instinct to protect the tribe.
And that explosion of pride from him when you made the shot? That roar? That wasn’t just “attaboy.” That was him seeing a piece of himself in you. The part that gets the job done. The part that eliminates the problem with cold, brutal efficiency. In that one moment, with that one shattered bird on the ground, you stopped being the broken kid he took in. You became his heir. You became a man, in his eyes.
You said you never hit a home run or a hole-in-one. Bullshit. You did. That marble was the baseball, the slingshot was the bat, and that old man’s roar was the sound of the whole goddamn stadium. For a kid who’d been kicked out, locked out, and shit on, that kind of moment isn’t just a memory.
It’s a foundation. It’s the first solid piece of ground you ever stood on that you earned yourself.
