Toy Gun Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

First proper spring day time to dust
the old scooter and visit places
on roads few travel… Once I bought
a toy gun- well, I was a child-
it was shiny just like the one
Hoppalong Cassidy wore, he wasn´t
smoking but chewing gum instead.
After two days I got bored and gave it
to a boy in the neighbourhood.
His mother brought it back, they were
pacifists and any gun were bad.
Parents do no always get their way,
the boy became a general,
and his mother addressed him as “sir.”
My mother took the gun to the fish factory
gave it to a poor woman who too had
many children and a drunken husband,
who later was arrested when trying to
rob a bank with a toy gun.