I’m a gimmicky kind of wolf sometimes. Probably not as much as I used to be, since age seems to bring with it an ever increasing shadow of surliness into my life. I think I’m going to be one of the most curmudgeonly old people in the history of oldness.

As a young pup, though, I loved gimmicks. So a pump-action water cannon with about a 2-liter-sized reserve tank? Oh, you betcha I was on board for that! This was most assuredly the next generation in summertime water gun warfare. I knew it was something I needed to have if I was going to be the Big Wolf in our annual school picnic water battle. So I saved my allowance for a couple of weeks so I could buy the Super Soaker 100, which at about $30 was a rather pricey gimmick at the time.

This was one of the most awesome piles of crackable plastic I’ve ever owned. And, yes, it did crack. And leak. I remember doing routine repairs on my Super Soaker 100 in preparation for big water battles. I had to if I wanted it to work properly. And model glue goes a long way indeed in doing up your plastic artillery. I imagine, though, that were I not the resourceful wolf that I always have been, I would have been sorely disappointed with this purchase.

This gun also taught me a very valuable if somewhat creepy lesson about human nature.

As I already mentioned, each year we would have a “School’s Almost Out” all-day picnic, which included our traditional water battle. This particular year I was already a marked wolf. Everyone knew from the previous year that I was packing a Super Soaker, which I had wielded with gleeful impunity and frightening precision (I was very proud of the fact that I could blast you square in the face if I had to, although I preferred to aim for lower areas, like the neck or armpit).

That year I ended up walking away a bit more scathed than I had the previous year. However, the one encounter that outshines all others in utter strangeness and creepiness came from an underclassman about whom I knew nothing beyond his name. As I was shooting at him in response to the dousing he’d just given me with a liter bottle, he charged at me like a Pamplona bull. His intent was to grab the gun for himself. He nearly succeeded until my somewhat feral response, which was to grab a clawful of whatever I could reach on him before he got away.

Remove your mind from the gutter, please. I ended up with a handful of his shirt…and pieces of his back skin embedded under my nails. You are permitted to shudder now. Yes, I marked him with my at the time always sharp and always painted black nails. He stopped, lifted the back of his shirt, where I saw three welted stripes that were, in some places, dribbling tiny rivulets of blood.

I was quite horrified at what I had just done, until I realized that he was somehow pleased by this. Even as I apologized, he stood there with the most discomfiting grin I think I’ve ever seen. I found out later that he showed those scratches to everyone he could, each time explaining happily that he’d gotten them from the Junior girl with the water cannon. He also would say increasingly sadomasochistic comments to me each time he saw me the rest of the day about how he’d been bad and perhaps I needed to deal with him more harshly.

Ew.

Who knew a Super Soaker would introduce me to the potential I could have had as a dominatrix?