This reminds me of a family story:

I was 4 years old and was being taken to my sister's violin recital. She was 7 and was playing a little sonata. My mom was the accompanist. My sister had been practicing diligently and tonight was the night that she finally got to perform for an audience.

Around that time, I was going through a phase of great imagination and "pretend," which involved me finding fun costumes to dress up in and acting like whatever I thought the character would act like. This included police, firefighters, knights, pirates, Zorro, and most importantly, cowboys. My mom encouraged this and even sewed some of the costumes for me and helped me imagine some of the accessories I'd need to complete whatever look I was going for that day.

The costume I wore to the recital was the ever-important cowboy gear. I donned my gun belt, jeans, chaps, boots, western shirt, gloves, and cowboy hat. I sat patiently through the recital between my mom and aunt, awaiting my sister's turn to play.

As a sidenote, I looked up to my sister in a huge way, she was my best friend at the time (and we remain extremely close to this day). I was super excited for the recital because I'd heard her practicing and I was going to get to start violin lessons the next year.

So finally, it was my sister's turn to play. She and my mom slid out of the aisle and went to the stage, and I slid down the row so I could see her playing.

Things were going very well. She was playing, my mom was playing along, and it all seemed like a great success. My aunt was videotaping and my dad was watching intently as the performance kicked off. Anyone who's been to a similar violin recital knows that the pieces are quite short, especially for the younger students.

Eventually, as the performance went on, I decided to become an active participant in the performance. I stealthily got out of my seat and walked to the front of the audience without anyone really noticing me -- it was dark and everyone was watching my sister perform. However, the one person who definitely noticed me was my sister. She kept playing through it all because she was a consummate professional.

Then, I got down on one knee, drew my (unbeknownst to anyone else), loaded cap gun, and fired a single shot into the air.

Mayhem! Laughter! A scramble from my aunt to retrieve me from the front of the stage! Through it all, my now completely embarrassed mom and sister kept playing, the performance went on.

I didn't get a spanking that night, but my dad always checked my pockets for caps and made sure I wasn't carrying a hot cap gun from that day forward.