TOY REVOLVER

— Well, I'm 38 now, and a bit less than 30 years ago, when I was 9 or 10, we made these pistols. Since then progress has made a great leap forward and now the country's overflowing with all kinds of metal and plastic pistols that you can hardly tell apart from the real thing. So you figure people haven't made these kinds of pistols for a good 20 years. Well, what can you say about the technique? (...) We made these based on older boys' pistols. You lay the old pistol on a slab of pine, trace it, and then with the lord's help you carve it out. The older guys even made spinning chambers for their pistols. That was a bit too difficult for me. Then we got hold of a handle, from a shovel, hoe, rake, or broom, for example, cut off about 5 centimeters, split it carefully into two parts with an axe or knife, and then attached it with nails. We didn't play cowboys — we played fascists. Not far from us there was a small factory that produced construction materials, and there was a railway leading to this factory. They used to offload sand there (...) We used to run and play kill the fascists there. Well, in a few years we all got into The Three Musketeers and we started to make swords instead. So the toy pistol got lost somewhere in some shed. And it probably would have rotted there. It stayed there for about 20 years, in which time I'd gotten married and had a kid. Then when my daughter was about six we were cleaning out the shed and we came across this pistol. I was reading Greek myths to her, about Aphrodite, about Zeus, about Athena the warrior. She liked Athena the most. She'd already made a bow and arrow and a club, made by covering a stick with molding clay. And then she got hold of that pistol and played at being Athena the warrior all summer.