Wednesday, February 11, 2015

A Johnny Eagle Rifle Story

Or is this another Christmas Story?

Have you ever heard of a Johnny Eagle Rifle?


I had not heard of one until the other night.  I'm sure part of the reason for that is cause I'm a girl and while I'm not really a girly girl I've never been known as a sporty or tomboy type girl either.  

But back to our story.  See, G and I had been to Toys R Us, shopping for little K-man's 3rd birthday present.  He was having a John Deere birthday party complete with a John Deere tractor pinata...

...that K-man hit "hard!"

K-man even had a John Deere cake!

Cause he is now 3 years old!

Ok...well maybe a little help is in order there to hold up only 3 fingers.
We all need a little help every now and then.  Mommies are good for that.

And K-man had a blast!  Until he crashed about 5:30, but thankfully Grandpa G was there to hang out and chill while cousin A-man entertained them...

I'm getting off track again.  Back to Toys R Us.  We were looking at toys with wheels...cause K-man is a boy, and boys like things with wheels!

Even G liked toys with wheels when he was a little boy.  In fact we ended up getting an old-fashioned metal Tonka dump truck for K-man, because G said that he always wanted one when he was a little boy.

After we'd left Toys R Us and stopped at a very busy Steak-N-Shake for a bite of supper, I mentioned to G that he has talked about playing with army guys when he was little, but then I asked him, "What other toys did you play with?"

He smiled and thought for a moment, and started telling me about playing with his Johnny Eagle rifle when he was about 10 years old or so.  These rifles would have been popular in the 1960's (yes, those ancient days of the 60's!), and they had bullet cartridges.  These weren't real bullets you understand, but Google leads to a pic like these.
Now one night, as this story goes, he was laying on the living room floor watching TV, and playing with just the bullet cartridge.  Now boys have a way of playing with bullet things like this in such a way that they may "shoot" the bullets without the gun.  So I'm sure you're not surprised to find out that G was shooting his teeth with these bullets while he was watching TV.

Makes perfect sense, right?  All he has to do is keep his teeth close together, so the bullet will bounce back off and land on the floor ready to reload.

Except one time, he shot, and his teeth weren't so close together.  So the bullet went past his teeth and before he knew it, the bullet had gone down his throat!

Yes, you read that right.  The bullet went past his teeth and straight down his throat!  Imagine that!

Now imagine that you are G, about 10 or 12 years old, and you aren't quite sure what to do.  So he swallows, and it doesn't hurt.  He sits up, swallows again and can't feel it.  His mom is sitting on the couch behind him blissfully unaware of what has just happened.

Should he tell her?  Would he get in trouble if he told her?

Well what if he didn't come right out and tell her, but asked what would happen if a "friend" did something like that?

So he turns to his mother and tries to ask as casually as possible, "Mom, what would happen if a kid swallowed one of these?" holding up the bullet cartridge?

His mom's eyes get real big, and she asks, "G!  Did you swallow one of those?"

"Well...um....maybe...uh...maybe...yea..." G replied.

Alarmed, his mother immediately calls Dr. Mauro.  I assume this was a call directly to his home in the evening, cause that's the way these things worked back then.  She proceeds to tell Dr. Mauro what has happened, and he very calmly asks questions like...

"Is any thing protruding?"

"No, I don't see anything protruding," Mom replies.

"Can he swallow?"

"Yes, he's drinking water with no trouble."

"Well, it looks like it's clear then and it will pass.  It's pointed the right way...."

And Dr. Mauro hangs up.

Wise man, because long about a few days later, he was right.  And apparently it didn't hurt if you can also imagine that....Did that just put me over the line to TMI????

Of course, G did get into trouble.  He believes that he had the bullets taken away from him.

Imagine that...

Now the whole time he's telling me this story, while I'm laughing, I'm asking him if he's making it up.  He swears it's a true story...that his older sister may very well remember it.  If she doesn't, we may never know for sure...

At least it's not like he shot his eye out or something!

So now, talk amongst yourselves...

  • True or false?  Do you believe this story is true?  Do you think this really happened to G?
  • How differently do you think this would be handled today vs. pre-1970?  Does a Dr. Mauro still exist?
  • If you were G's mother, would you have followed Dr. Mauro's advice?

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