On Being a Real Westerner

"On Being a Real Westerner" is a story about a young boy who is fascinated with a .22 rifle that his stepfather, Roy, has. The young boys birthday is coming up and he pesters his stepfather about the gun. His stepfather gives the gun to him, but his mother does not approve. She makes the boy promise that he will only take out the gun when she or his stepfather is there with him. The boy gets home from school everyday earlier then his parents and on a regular basis he begins to take out the gun to clean it. He soon goes from simply cleaning the gun, to playing with it. He begins to dress up in his stepfather's old army clothes, hold the gun, and look at himself in the mirror. He then goes on to playing with it by aiming the gun from his apartment window to people who are walking by on the street. The young boy says that this gives him a sense of power; that he has control over these people that are walking by and they do not even know it. One day he could not fight the temptation. He followed an old couple walking down the street with the aim of his gun, and once they made the corner, he shot the gun and killed a squirrel. When his mother got home, he told her that there was a dead squirrel out in the street and they gave the squirrel a burial. He did not tell his mother that he had killed the squirrel. He was very upset by this and began to cry himself to sleep that night. He stopped crying and knelt down on the side of his bed and began to pray. After he prayed, he felt better and had a smile on his face. After that day, he began to not go to the apartment after school when he knew he would be there alone. He also knew that one day he would have to fight that same temptation again.

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