The CSI: GAMERS EDITION

  Good Grief It’s a Bow

Uncle Ronnie gave Dad a bow set — bow, quiver, arm guard, the whole works. Dad was so proud you’d think he’d been knighted. He took that bow out and showed everyone. If the mailman had lingered too long, he’d have seen it too.

Uncle Ronnie was serious about bow hunting. It was his passion. (He was later accidently killed while hunting — the thing he loved most besides his family.) That bow set wasn’t just sporting equipment. It was a piece of him.

Then one day… it was gone.

Not the guns.

Not the ammo.

Not the jewelry.

Just the bow set. 

Dad always believed someone in the family had taken it, he was heartbroken. 

He looked like someone had stolen his dog, his truck, and his last slice of pie all at once.

Fast-forward to my senior year. I took an Arts and Crafts class — which was a mistake, because we were pouring ceramics and our greenware kept cracking like we were running a pottery graveyard. I knew exactly why: we left it in the mold overnight. But the teacher wouldn’t listen. He had the confidence of a man who’d never successfully made a mug.

I finally asked if there was another project I could do.

He said, “You could make a bow.”

A bow.

Not a ceramic ashtray.

Not a lopsided vase.

A bow.

It wouldn’t be Uncle Ronnie’s bow, but it would be a bow just the same.

I had no idea what I’d signed up for.

I chiseled.

I sanded.   I sanded more.  I sanded until my fingerprints were optional and the wood was velvety smooth.

Four months of elbow grease, sawdust, and me pretending I knew what I was doing.

But I didn’t care.

I was thrilled to escape the Cracking Ceramics of Doom.

And somewhere in all that sanding, I realized I wasn’t just making a bow.

I was trying to give Dad back something he’d lost.. 

Christmas arrived, and I had one problem:

How do you wrap a four-month emotional project shaped like a medieval weapon?

I improvised like a chaotic elf.

I wrote a note and stuck it inside a tiny ring box:

“What are you looking in here for? It’s in the closet.”

Then I wrapped that box.

Put it inside a bigger box.

Wrapped that one.

Put that inside a bigger box.

By the time I was done, Dad basically had a cardboard Russian nesting doll with trust issues.

We saved it for last.

Dad shook the giant box. “Feels interesting.”

“Oh, it is,” I said, trying not to vibrate with excitement.

He opened box after box after box, muttering things like,

“Good grief,”

And

“What in the Sam Hill…”

until he finally reached the ring box.

He opened it.

Read the note.

Looked at me like I’d just handed him the location of buried treasure.

I went to the closet, wrapped the bow in a blanket like it was a newborn, and carried it out.

When he unwrapped it, he froze.

His eyes filled.

He didn’t say a word — he didn’t have to.

That moment was worth every blister, every splinter, every hour of sanding until my fingerprints were optional.

Then U. Gene stepped in with perfect timing.

He handed me fifty dollars — the exact cost of the materials — and said, “Make me one.”

I handed it right back.

“Nope. Never again. That bow took part of my soul. I’m retired.”

Dad hung the bow on a set of horns we’d brought back from Old Mexico.

 He told everyone the horns and bow were a matched set and must never be separated, like some kind of frontier Excalibur.

And now?

Montana has them hanging in his house — honoring Dad, Uncle Ronnie, and the Christmas I accidentally became a one-woman bow-making sweatshop.

But apparently my suffering inspired a movement.

Years later, long after I’d escaped that classroom, I heard the teacher was still telling students, “If you don’t want to make ceramics, make a bow. The best one ever made was by a girl named Geannii.”

Imagine that.  I went in trying to avoid a cracked ashtray… and walked out a legend.