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OG Woodlief

This Christmas I joined the ranks of gangster rappers and second-rate, drug addict writers. The three older boys, you see, got Airsoft pellet guns. Each looks like a semi-automatic .32, except for the bright orange tip which is supposed to deter police officers from filling you full of holes, unless you happen to be a black man reaching for his keys in New York City, in which case they’re still going to shoot you thirty or forty times.

The very name — “Airsoft” — bespeaks gentleness, softness, the absence of violence. So I’m holding one of these gentle orange-tipped tokens of love, and I say as much to Wife. “These aren’t supposed to really hurt, I don’t think.”

“I don’t think so,” she says, and then proffers her rear end as a target.

Now, I understand that it’s bad policy to point a weapon at your wife — unless, of course, she’s already drawn on you. And we do generally follow gun safety rules on the Woodlief property; even when the boys are playing with sticks as guns they’re supposed to keep them pointed at the ground unless they are shooting bad guys. Thus I realize that it was not good role modeling, on my part, to accept Wife’s invitation.

That’s right: I busted a cap in my wife’s a–.

“Airsoft” is really quite the misnomer, as it turns out, because those innocent-looking little pellets really, really sting. The key, when you’ve just shot your wife in the rear end, is not to laugh until she does. Which she did, thankfully. Then we turned it into a lesson for the youngsters, Clark Griswold style: ”You see kids . . .”

Now that I’ve got “street cred,” I’m thinking I might get in touch with my inner suburban anger and release a rap album, or perhaps volunteer for one of those “scared straight” programs. Because the children are our future, God help us. So let my experience be a lesson to the rest of you. When you happen to be holding a gun, and your wife dares you to shoot her in the rump, just say no.