Go Ahead! Make My … Oops

After giving it no thought whatsoever, I’ve decided I’m definitely against folks being allowed to carry concealed weapons. The reason is, a whole lot of them may be no better at it than I was.

My history with weapons, concealed or otherwise, is not pretty. In fact, it’s a wonder I still have all my toes or that I’m not serving hard time somewhere for maiming the innocent.

There were no guns in my house when I was a little girl. My father truly believed that folks could be nice to one another and if they weren’t it didn’t take a gun to solve the problem.

Like the time he came home from work late one night to find a strange man sleeping in our porch swing. “Hey, fella,” he is reputed to have said. “You live around here?”

When the guy came up swinging and questioning my father’s legitimacy, my peace-loving dad rearranged his nose with one swift swing. Then he brought him in the house to put ice on it.

Mom was unhappy with the blood on the kitchen floor and I wasn’t allowed to leave my room.

Between icepacks, Daddy found out the stranger had gotten off the streetcar at the wrong stop, and after a few too many draughts at the local pub, one porch had begun to look pretty much like another so he had decided to pass out on ours.

After Daddy got the bleeding stopped, he drove the unfortunate fellow home.

So when I married a man with a .45 in the nighttable drawer, I wasn’t sure how to handle it. Literally.

Our spooky old Chicago apartment used to give me the creeps when my husband was away on trips. I spent too many sleepless nights listening to the creakings and groanings of a century-old building and imagining faceless monsters stalking down the long hall to where I lay quaking under the covers, wondering how the Trib’s headline the next day would treat my untimely demise.

That got old in a hurry.

“Teach me how to fire the .45,” I begged my young but not-so-stupid spouse. He flatly refused. Instead, he put more locks on the doors of our third-floor flat and made me promise to leave the gun in the drawer.

“See you Tuesday morning,” he said a few weeks later as he slipped into his topcoat, brushing cat hair from the sleeve. “Lock the doors and you’ll be fine,” he assured me. I nodded tacit agreement, kissed him goodbye, closed the door and headed for the night table drawer.

The .45 and I were home alone. Gingerly, I held it in two fingers, turning it first this way then that, carefully avoiding the business end. I knew there was a “clip” where the bullets were kept and that a slide had to be pulled to put one in the chamber.

But how? Then I recalled something called a “safety.” Being careful to keep the end with the little hole in it pointed away from me and the cats, I poked and tugged at first one thing and then another until I had it figured out.

If I mash these two buttons the clip falls out. When I swivel that little pivot thing I’m able to pull back the slide and shake the gun upside down to be sure there are no shells in the chamber.

Bingo! No more night terrors for me. I went to bed that night and slept the undisturbed sleep of an armed woman in charge.

And not a moment too soon. I awoke to a series of suspicious sounds from the opposite end of the hall. Without hesitation I grabbed the .45 and headed for the showdown.

But wait! I’m naked! I raced back to the bedroom, threw the .45 on the bed and grabbed for my husband’s old pajamas. I had to hold the pants up with one hand but my good right hand held the .45.

As I tiptoed down the hall I remembered I had no shell in the chamber. I’ve got to pull the slide, I told myself. I needed my left hand free, the one clutching my pants, to hold onto the gun while I pulled the slide with my right.

My pants hit the floor. Disgrace or disaster? What a choice.

I made a quick grab for the pants and as I fumbled with the safety I heard an ominous but not unfamiliar voice from the darkness. “Our trip canceled. Are you going to pull up your pants before or after you shoot me?”

My gun-toting career had ended as ignominiously as it had begun. Humiliation and .45s don’t go together.

xxxx