My Unforgettable Lesson from the Shotgun Instructor with Parkinson’s

The summer after my freshman year of high school, my brother and I went to rifle camp. Learning to shoot rifles, shotguns, and old-fashioned muskets was very exciting.

On the first day of shotgun training, we were shocked to meet our instructor, an elderly man whose hands shook uncontrollably. We didn’t know much about Parkinson’s disease at the time, but it was clear to us that this instructor would be doing the talking while one of the younger counselors would show us how to actually shoot.

When the elderly, trembling instructor picked up a shotgun and loaded it, we exchanged nervous glances with the other campers. The shotgun bobbed like a boat on choppy seas, but the instructor seemed entirely calm, even tranquil. “Pull!” he called, and a clay disc was launched into the air.

For a brief second, the shaking in his hands suddenly stopped, and the disc evaporated in a cloud of dust.

Everything happened in slow motion. The shaking in his hands suddenly stopped. With robotic precision, he flicked the shotgun upward. There was a roar, a burst of flame, and the disc evaporated in a cloud of dust. Then the instructor’s hands resumed their shaking.

We were stunned. We wanted to see it again; each time seemed miraculous. With a supreme force of will, the instructor could calm his hands just long enough to fire the shot. There was hardly a full second between when he called “Pull!” and when the disc evaporated. If it wasn’t for his instinctual sense of aim, honed over a lifetime of practice, there was no way he could have done it.

My brother and I were in awe watching him transcend himself, allowing his inner mastery to outshine his disability. We started to think differently about our own challenges and how a brief moment of willpower could transform everything. I didn’t realize a different lesson about self-transcendence was coming our way.

You Look Like a Jew!

One of my bunkmates happened to see my new high school ID card. Laughing, he said, “You look like a Jew in this picture!”

“Yeah,” I replied, “because I am one.”

An awkward silence fell over the bunk. I felt that everyone was looking at me differently now. Eventually, someone spoke.

“Oh,” he said, “that’s… cool.”

It dawned on me that none of these boys had met a Jew before.

It dawned on me that none of these boys had met a Jew before. Growing up in small, rural towns, they knew about Judaism only through rumors and stereotypes. I had become the ultimate “other” for them, a foreigner their culture had taught them to distrust.

We often let our prejudices go unchecked not because of hatred or bigotry, but because it’s easier. In the words of writer E. B. White, “Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.” Although I had never encountered serious antisemitism at that point in my life, I began to realize what it would feel like to be dismissed, even despised, because I was a Jew.

The next morning, I told my brother what had happened. We were both nervous. Would the other campers stop talking to us? Would they bully us? Even the counselors were surprised to learn we were Jewish. We felt utterly alone.

But then something surprising happened. The campers started asking us questions – not sarcastic or mocking, but questions of genuine interest and curiosity:

“So, did you have a bar mitzvah? What is that?”

“Why don’t Jews eat pork?”

“Could you bless me in Hebrew?”

With each question we answered, we became less foreign, and soon the campers were talking about their new Jewish friends. The campers could have stuck to their stereotypes, projecting on us all of the prejudices they had accumulated back home. Instead, they made a conscious decision to transcend their biases. All it took was a brief moment of openness and the sincere desire to connect.

When our parents picked us up at the end of camp, we told them about the proper method of loading a black powder musket, the devastating recoil of a 50-caliber rifle, and that a bunkmate showed us how to kill and skin a rattlesnake. But our favorite lesson was about a shotgun instructor with Parkinson’s, bunkmates who had never met a Jew, and our human potential to transcend our greatest obstacles.