Barcelona Christmas

In 2008 I was living in France and having a fabulous time doing incredibly stupid things across the European continent.  At Christmas time I decided to follow my friend to Spain where she knew a whole bunch of people, some of whom were willing to lend us their apartment while they were traveling.  This Christmas was absolutely filled with stories I could share, including how I had my first kiss in this apartment right after accidentally locking myself in the bathroom, which apparently some people find pretty sexy.  Who knew.  But that’s not the story I’m going to tell.  The story I have chosen is the story of how my friend and I ended up wandering the streets of Barcelona at 4 a.m. because we had forgotten to actually write down the address of this apartment before leaving it to have Christmas Eve adventures. 

 It started off amazing.  We spent the evening at an apartment with a number of expats from all over the world and danced until nearly 4 am, at which point we decided maybe it was a little late and we should go home.  It hadn’t occurred to us quite yet that we had no idea where home was.  We only knew the metro stop nearest the apartment, because that is where we had met our hosts earlier. Unfortunately, the metro in Barcelona closed at some point and wasn’t going to reopen until 6 a.m.  We could either wait two hours, or attempt to take a night bus which theoretically would drop us a few streets down from this metro stop.  We would just have to change buses once, and then ask the bus driver on the second bus to let us know when to get off. 

At 4 a.m, my friend and I were standing around shivering in the pre-dawn winter air at a deserted bus stop waiting for a bus we hoped would actually come.  After twenty minutes, it did.  Thank goodness, because the two of us were ready to collapse on the street and wait for the metro to open at 6. 

Which is what we should definitely have done.

But we weren’t that smart.

The bus itself was actually pretty crowded.  A lot of Christmas partiers. They say Spain is the country that knows how to party, and let me tell you, the stereotype doesn’t come from nowhere.  So I shouldn’t have been so surprised to find a packed bus full of slowly sobering people at 4:30 in the morning.  We took the bus no problem to Placa de Catalunya and got off, very proud of ourselves. 

Until we realized we had no idea where to find the bus we needed to transfer to. 

We walked all around the square, going up to every bus driver asking if they were the bus we wanted, and every time the driver pointed in some other direction.  It was a giant game of connect the dots but with buses, and we ran back and forth and around and across until finally we found a bus driver who said, yes, get on, this is your bus. 

Here we came to a problem.  My friend and I only knew what metro stop we were near.  No other significant markers, not even the name of the street we were on.  And the bus driver had never heard of this metro stop.  He advised us to ask the other passengers. 

It was so wonderful that my friend was a native Spanish speaker.

We  (my friend) started asking other passengers about this metro stop, but no one had heard of it.  We began to panic, because there was no way we would recognize anything, we didn’t even know the name of the street we were staying on, and…and…all around panic. Eventually though we found one man who said, oh yeah! Florída! Yes, yes, we’ll pass right by the metro there, you’ll just have get off the bus, walk a ways, turn left, turn right, and you’re right there.  He told us that we should get off at the stop after he did. 

This meant that around 5:30 in the morning we stepped off the bus into an area we had never seen before.  And could not remember how the man had told us how to find the metro.  What should we have done?  I’m still not really sure.  There was no one around to ask directions, we had no map…

Whatever we SHOULD have done, we certainly should absolutely not have done what we did.  Which was picked a direction and started walking.  My friends, please don’t ever find yourselves wandering a foreign city in the wee hours of the morning on Christmas day with all the drunk creepy people completely lost.  It is a BAD IDEA.  I cannot stress this enough.  Everyone says, do not go wandering alone in the night you could get murdered or raped or whatnot and you may kind of shrug it off and think, well, clearly bad things can happen but they probably won’t.

This is FOOLISH THINKING.  Some things maybe you have to learn the hard way.  I can tell you one thing, next time I’m taking a taxi no matter what.  This was a horrible experience.  We saw fights, we hid behind walls and in doorframes from crazy people, we ran to avoid groups of very drunk guys who looked indescribably frightening, and in the end we stopped on a street corner, horribly lost and afraid to go in any direction for fear of running into people or getting even farther from home. 

Finally, we saw a police car.  We started to run after it, hoping to catch their attention and get directions, or even better, a ride.  But we weren’t fast enough, and we stopped again on the sidewalk, dejected and despairing.  But miracle of miracles, the police car stopped just within our view.  Without saying a word both of us started to run at the same time towards the car, but before we made it the police officers jumped out of the car and ran into a building.  We slowed a little, and in the next few seconds, two more police cars showed up and stopped in front of the building.  All the officers got out and ran inside.  My friend and I looked at each other.  We couldn’t decide which was worse.  Continuing into the unknown, or waiting around by the police cars in front of a building where god knows what crime had been or was being committed.  There were a lot of police officers, so we were afraid it was a pretty big crime.  In the end we decided to wait, because criminals in handcuffs scared us less than the criminals running around loose on the streets. 

We waited about twenty minutes.  I have no idea what on earth those police officers were doing in there, perhaps having coffee and tea with the perpetrators, because they all came out together laughing and smiling, with no criminals in tow, and were quite surprised to see two frightened looking girls huddled together against one of their cars.  My friend took over, for obvious reasons, and got directions to our metro stop.  The police officer talking to us thought it was hilarious that a) we had gotten so lost, and b) we didn’t even know the name of the street we were staying on.

Travel tip #1, always know where you live. Could come in handy.  Travel tip #2, carry a map, because knowing where you live is often useless unless you know how to get there.

The policeman flirted like mad with both of us.  He told us nothing would happen to us in Barcelona, it’s a wonderfully safe city, and all we had to do was walk four blocks down and six blocks over and we’d be fine. 

We thanked them and walked until we were out of sight and then we ran until we got to our apartment.  We went to bed immediately.     

The next morning brought new madness and poor decisions, and the next week brought the amount of adventure some people don’t have in a lifetime.  Maybe this blog will revisit that week at some point in the future. 

Remote Access

A long time ago, I returned from my year in France expecting to start my new career in publishing only to find that just as few people wanted to speak to me in 2008 as did in 2007.  With no prospects, growing debt, and no take backs on my decision not to renew my teaching contract, I took a job as a software tester at my father's company.  Yes, I worked in software development. This doesn't fit with what anyone knows about me, or what I know about me, and sometimes I forget it's even true.  But for 9 months I worked alongside engineers and filed bug reports, making a contribution to society and only once blew up the computer.  I could tell several ridiculous stories from this time of my life, and I may end up getting to them in other entries, but this one is going to focus on the day I learned about "remote access."

I was probably in my fourth or fifth month at the company.  It was around this time that the financial situation, which had been sharply declining since the day I arrived, took a turn for the worse.  The place was in so much trouble that they could no longer afford to pay their rent, so they were slowly phasing out the office, which meant at first half, and then eventually all, employees were working from home.

Except for me.

I had to be on a special testing computer and they hadn't quite figured out yet how to let me work from home.  This meant that by the end of it all I was literally the only person coming into the office daily which led to fun situations like that time they forgot for a whole week to tell me I'd been laid off.  Ha! That was fun.

But that comes later.  On this day, I was not yet out of a job,  but I was alone, and my boss had called in and told me something specific he wanted tested.  It involved a complex series of commands and functions and something that might have been html but could have just been gibberish.  At any rate, I agreed to take care of it straight away, opened up a command prompt, and typed in something that to me looked like abcd/open/file\::::\\/.  I got back an angry error message.  So I retyped it. Got back the error. Retyped it. Error.

I got frustrated.  I was typing it in EXACTLY like he said. I knew it. So I typed FUCK YOU PIECE OF SHIT COMPUTER.

Error, it said.

I'LL ERROR THE HELL OUT OF YOU YOU HATEFUL MACHINE I'LL SEE YOU IN HELL

Error.

My phone rang.

It was my boss. He said, "Hi Danielle.  Just wanted to check in....having any...problems?"
"Yes, actually," I said. "Having quite an issue here. It's just giving me an error message."
"Did you accidentally hit the backslash instead of the forward slash after the file?"
"Uuumm....yes! Yes I did! Wow. Thanks."
"No problem."

We hung up. I thought my boss was pretty amazing to figure out so quickly where I had gone wrong, but I just put that down to his being smarter than me.

I went back to my typing.  No error! Yay! On to step 2!! I typed in what looked to me like :::'';;,;kl(fileserver////Ping

Error.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME, I typed into the command box.

Error.

I WILL FUCK UP YOUR SHIT, I replied.

My phone rang.

"Hi Danielle, just wanted to make sure things are going more smoothly."
"Actually, having another problem over here. When I..."
"Did you put the : at the beginning instead of the end?""
"Um...yes. I did."

This time I was a little suspicious, but I hung up, rearranged the : and continued onward without dwelling on it. I got to the next step.

Error.

THAT'S IT I WILL SMASH YOU TO BLOODY MOTHERFUCKING PIECES

I had hardly finished typing when my phone rang again.

"Hi Danielle just wanted to clarify that there's no space between the / and the \ okay?"
"Okay..."

Now I was convinced my boss was made of magic.

I went home that night and was telling my father the whole story (he no longer worked at that company by this time) and he just stares at me and before I get halfway through the story he said, "Danielle...you do realize your boss can SEE your computer screen?"
"No no," I said. "He can't. He's not in the office."
"He has software that allows him to connect to you computer and see your screen.  He's been checking on you. That's how he knows when you're having a problem."
This was possibly the most horrific news I could ever have received. Ever. I stopped breathing. "So....he saw..."
"Yes," said my father.
"Shit," I said.
"Yup," said my father. "any time you see a little red eye icon at the bottom of your screen, he's watching you."

This was especially bad news, because this was NOT the first time I'd gotten frustrated at the computer and used some pretty bad words.  Also, when I was testing the text boxes, I would type things like "LOOK OVER THERE. ISN'T THAT A BADGER WITH A GUN?" and "THERE WERE TWO MUFFINS IN AN OVEN....HAHAHAHAHAHAH."  And I had seen that little red eye ALL THE TIME and never thought about what it was.

He had seen everything. He never mentioned a damn thing. Not to me, and not to my father, who he spoke to regularly.

At first, I was very, very careful.  And no longer surprised that my boss always mysteriously knew when to call me to make sure I wasn't having a problem.  Soon though, when it was clear he was never going to fire me for using profanity or being generally weird, I started having some fun.  When I could see he was logged in, I would immediately start testing the text boxes and write in the weirdest jokes I could think of.  I even looked a few up at home so I would be prepared. I liked to think I brightened his day.

One day, I was having a major problem.  I could not get the commands I needed to work, and I was typing them over and over vainly.  Then I noticed the little red eye.  I typed it in a few more times so he would see that I was clearly stuck and call, but he stayed quiet.  No phone call.  No sign.  He kept pretending he wasn't there.  I repeated the same futile action for five more minutes, daring him to call me.  The red eye remained, but the phone didn't ring.  No email popped up.  I stopped typing for a minute and stared at the still computer screen.  The red eye stared back.

Finally, deliberately, I opened Notepad and typed, "I know you're there. I need your help."

For nearly a full minute, the note remained there, unanswered.  He was trying to keep up the charade.  But finally, slowly, my mouse arrow moved on its own and words eerily appeared under my note with the correct command.

From them on, the spell was broken. I didn't bother with anymore jokes, I watched my language, and I wrote a few more HELP ME notes in Notepad.  Soon after that I was apparently laid off, no one told me for a week, and when they did, I awkwardly moved on to teaching at Fox Chapel Area High School.  Which was pretty special.

Year of Firsts: Piercings

I did this at the beginning of November, but it was a secret from the family until last week.  No one in my family has pierced ears. Not my sister, not my mother, not my grandmother, not my aunt, not anyone. Growing up, anytime anyone in or out of the family mentioned ear piercings my mother would take the opportunity to tell me and my sister exactly how terrible getting your ears pierced was, using words like "mutilation," "puss," "infection," and "agony." Then she would reach over and pinch our ears with her nails.  Sometimes if no one had mentioned piercings for a long time she would randomly just pinch us and remind us of the horror that awaited us if we tried to pierce our ears. And that was just for ears.  Nose rings would ruin your future and belly button rings would kill you outright.

She started this with us young enough that it actually worked.  No matter how many friends and strangers I saw walking around with beautiful earrings and perfectly un-diseased ears, I still had no desire to do it after I turned 18.  Or after 21.  Or 25.  I was pretty convinced I would die with un-mutilated ears.

But then the Year of Firsts came, and FriendJ was getting her nose pierced, and it seemed like a logical step.

I made the decision extremely last minute so as not to have time to back out of it. FriendJ had picked out a tattoo/piercing shop in Virginia (uuuuuuuugh VIRGINIA) and we went on a Friday evening just before closing and had a nice, long consultation with a patient  boy named Peter whose face was made 50% out of metal.  He spent a good amount of time reassuring me that Death was a negligible risk of ear piercings.  He was very kind.  He even gave me a small, round, pink stuffed creature to hold during the ordeal like a small child and he did not have a trace of mockery on his face.  Though any mocking looks could have been concealed by all the glinting metals.

Everyone had told me it hardly hurt at all, but I don't like seeing needles if they are about to go into my skin so I told Peter I would just keep my eyes shut while he made all his preparations.  This means I missed seeing what the needle looked like, which is best, because afterwards my friends told me that it was a hollow needle, and the largest they had seen.  I yelled a terrible word when the needle went through.  If the creature had been live instead of stuffed, I would have killed it brutally and barbarically. But I did not cry!  Even though it hurt worse than the worst I had ever imagined and continued to be agony filled as Peter said, "Okay! Now the other one!"

I want everyone to take a moment to think about how proud they are of me that I let him do the other one.

I continued to be in terrible pain for days, but I had completed a pretty big First! I had Overcome Fears! I had Defied Authority!

Things went remarkably well for 7 weeks, right up until I saw the Authority whose name is Mother, last week for our family vacation.  She took the initial news moderately well, although she did spent the next 5 days pinching my sister's ears at a new high rate.

I was pretty pleased with myself for proving her wrong.  Nothing terrible had happened! Everything was JUST FINE.

Until 5 days into the vacation at which point we were in the middle of the Caribbean Sea with no land in sight for two days, no internet and no phone, when my left ear began to swell grotesquely and hurt as though someone with strong fingers was pinching my ear.

The irony.

I kept it quiet for a few days instead of going to the ship doctor, because my favorite way of handling medical situations is to pretend they are not happening and assume they will go away. Of course, it did not go away. It continued to get worse and worse until I finally decided to take the earring out to clean and replace it and discovered that I could not get the earring out.  This was panic inducing and involved me locked in a hotel bathroom yelling incoherently for a few hours. The Authority had such a fit that my little sister ran away from the hotel.  She forgot her shoes, however, so she didn't make it especially far.

Eventually though, the earrings came out, gold set ones went in, and I am now mutilated just like everyone else normal.

Year of Firsts: Recap

December! The Year of Firsts is coming to an end.  Very few of them actually made it to blog posts, so I thought I'd share some of the list here, categorized.  This is not the full list.
It's been a damn good year.

DANCING:
Waltz
Contra
Square
Country line
Two stepping
Zumba

SPORTS (this word is interpreted VERY loosely for purposes of this list):
Bocce
Flip cup and beer pong (very very very loosely)
Pool team tryout
45 minutes of medieval European MMA
Paintball
Yoga

FOOD:
Rattlesnake
Antelope
Alligator

ADVENTURE:
Volcano hike
Seeing the rainforest
Camping
Treasure hunting
Flash mob
Mechanical bull riding

PLACES:
Dallas
Austin
Costa Rica
New Mexico
the National Arboretum
Central Park
The Renaissance Faire

Uncategorized: Finding a new and exciting job to be started in just one week, where for the First time, I will be a Director.

Also, one final secret, to be revealed at the end of the year.

I've got a few weeks left. Who knows what could happen.

Prepositions and Turkey Balls

Six years ago I was in France teaching French youth about the holiday and thought it would be fun to do with them the cute little hand turkey exercise we do here as children. I had them trace their hands and make it into a turkey drawing and have them write 5 things they were thankful for, one in each finger/feather. I had drawn my own example turkey and written a few things I was thankful for, like friends and family, and then some silly ones like Matt Damon and dessert. I passed it around as I explained the holiday, and the idea of "being thankful." For whatever reason though, it wasn't translating very well and there were a lot of confused whispers because my students preferred to whisper confusedly in French than ever ask me any direct questions. Eventually I heard a girl ask "Why is there a person named Dessert in her turkey?" It was at this point I realized we were confusing being thankful TO with being thankful FOR.

Damn prepositions.

We cleared it up and drew some turkeys, but I will always remember how the young ones thought I knew a person named Dessert.

Later I went home to my Welsh roommate who I discovered believed that all Americans celebrate Thanksgiving exactly how they do on Friends. I hadn't even seen Friends. We both learned a lot.
I explained that "turkey balls" is not a traditional dish.

Parallel Parking

In 2003, I finally got my driver’s license. I was 17 years old, I had a 1992 Honda Civic, and in 2003 three of the four doors still opened.  

It was summer, I’d had my license for two weeks, when I arrived at Rachael’s house in the afternoon.  It was one of those rare beautiful days, sunny, warm, not too hot for pants. In good spirits, I pulled onto the block.  I immediately noticed that the street was particularly parked up. There was exactly one spot available, in between two cars across the street from the house.  It wasn't huge, but it was just right for my Honda. All it took was a little parallel parking skill.

Which I did not have. But I had at least passed the test, so I knew I COULD do it. Maybe. I had plenty of time, and I couldn't see anyone around, so I pulled up alongside the first car and prepared to back up. 

I backed right in the curb.

So I pulled out, and backed up again. Hit the curb at a wide angle.

Frustrated, but not ready to give up, I prepared for another try.  And that’s when I noticed the neighbor standing on his lawn watching me, grinning. 

The neighbor was 16 years old, and his name was Adam.  He thought I was absolutely hilarious. I pointedly ignored him.

I backed into the curb.

“Getting closer!” Adam called out, pumping a fist in the air encouragingly. I did not answer.

I backed ONTO the curb.

“Turn it a little more to the left…no…right….yes….like that…hahaha!” said Adam. 

I prayed to God and asked that if only I could parallel park this car in only one more try I would never ask for help again.

It didn't work. But I couldn't give up at this point.  Especially since Adam had suddenly shut up and gone inside.

Left alone, my panic started to subside.  But only for a minute, because after a minute, Adam came out with a lawn chair, made a show of flopping down into it, and settled himself in to watch my performance. Occasionally he would clap, on every try he would shout directions and make judgments upon  my driving skills.

Somewhere around attempt #11, Adam realized something. His grin vanished, his eyes opened wide, he leaped from his lawn chair and started running straight at me, screaming, “THAT’S MY PORSCHE!!!!!!!!!”

I realized he wasn't running straight at me, but at the car just in front of me, which was, in fact, a Porsche, a fact that I had not noticed in my concentration, and which Adam had not noticed in his wicked glee. Adam was frantically jumping into his car trying to start the engine when I made my final back-up maneuver. I was sort of in—but my back wheel was up on the sidewalk.  I sighed, and was about to try again, when I heard an older male voice.

“Oh no, sweetheart. That’s good enough. Leave it there.”

I stuck my head through the window to see a man holding a dog on a leash, standing and watching.  I heard Adam’s car start. “I can just leave the car like this?” I asked the man.

“I would,” he said.

I sighed, and turned off my engine. Relieved, Adam turned off his car as well.  I grabbed my belongings and bolted into Rachael’s house without looking back.

Despite all the time I spent at Rachael’s house that summer and the summers to come, I never saw Adam again.

UNTIL ONE DAY 8 YEARS LATER I WAS IN A BAR with Rachael and upon walking in, she said, “Oh hey, I know that guy!!” and made a beeline for a guy about our own age sitting at a table with a friend.  I followed her, because I always follow her, and we pulled up some chairs and sat with this guy and his friends.  We were all introduced, the guy’s name was Adam, his friend’s name has been forgotten in the pages of my memory.  Rachael soon became engrossed in conversation with his friend, and I felt obligated to start talking.  I asked him how he knew Rachael.  He told me he’d been her neighbor growing up.  I said that was very nice.

Then I said, “YOUR NAME IS ADAM AND YOU GREW UP AS RACHAEL’S NEIGHBOR????”

At my shouting, Rachael turned around. “What is going on?”

I said, “THIS IS YOUR NEIGHBOR. ADAM.”

She said, “Yeah, so?”

I said nothing.

She said, “AAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

Adam said, “Uh……what?”

Rachael said, “She tried to parallel park in front of your house once.”

Adam said, “YOU’RE THE GIRL WITH THE BLUE HONDA CIVIC!!!”

I died of shame. 

Year of Firsts: Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels

Next on the list of Firsts was to learn to shoot a gun.  Until Sunday, I had never touched a gun. In fact, I had never seen a gun in the real world apart from the handguns police officers keep holstered on their belts and the military weaponry carried around by soldiers I’ve run into in other countries. However, since we all know now that exactly NO  ONE is coming for me in the event of the zombie apocalypse, I decided to take matters into my own hands and learn some vital skills that may someday help me survive in the hostile decimated world.

Two kind hearted gun-owning friends and one non-gun-owning-yet-gun-enthusiast friend agreed to assist me in my First.  Since we don’t know if these friends want their names on the internet, we will call them Friend1, Friend2, and Friend3 (the numbers do not indicate order of importance, so please do not write in with complaints).  Sunday morning, filled with trepidation, I put on a white sweatshirt and wrapped a brilliantly pink scarf around my neck to be sure I was not mistaken for a tree, a deer, a duck, or a target board.  Anyone who has been to a shooting range versus the woods on the first day of hunting season probably realizes that this was stupid and pointless. But as we know, the whole point of the First exercise is to tread beyond the line of ignorance drawn where I was born.  

The drive was long, the weather was rainy, and my head was filled with daydreams of getting accidentally shot in the face by a normally mild-mannered gun-owner seized by a fit of insanity, or by myself seized in a fit of total incompetence. When we arrived, Friend1 removed several shotguns from the trunk of the car and handed one to me. Struck with the horror of suddenly for the first time in my life holding an actual, real, un-plastic, un-water-filled gun, I couldn’t figure out how to hold it while also keeping it as far away from me as possible but then not wanting to admit to wanting to keep it as far away as possible so also holding it nonchalantly in a discreet yet totally cool manner.

“Stop holding it like a purse,” instructed Friend1.

I made my best attempt.

We walked into the store.  Immediately on my left was a door covered in photos of men next to large dead creatures. Immediately in front of me were lots of guns. Lots and lots and lots of guns.  Within half  a second I went from a person who had never seen a gun to someone who has seen eight billion guns in very close quarters.  One of them was pink.  One of them was monstrously large and had a notecard on it that read “This is not a real gun.”  It was the most comforting notecard I have ever read, even after the Women’s Studies Notecard Incident of 2003.  

“Hey!” said Friend3, pointing. I looked, and discovered a paper target of a zombie with little red capsules that burst like blood when you hit them. Practical application learning device!

We went to the counter to fill out paperwork. I had to write my driver’s license on a paper stating I was mentally sound and not about to sue anyone and then sign it. Friend1 asked for bullets for the shotguns.

“We don’t have any left,” the employee told him.  “There’s been a real shortage of that type of ammunition since the 2008 election.  Mysterious.  The companies are all still producing it, they keep making it, but where is it going? No one can find it to buy it.  Could be a conspiracy…”

If only I could remember everything he said. He did implicate Obama in the plot to ruin gun owners’ lives.  I was super pleased. What could be a better part of my gun experience than a gun owner spouting conspiracy theories with Obama at the heart of the nefarious cloud of mystery?

Yet, EVEN BETTER was the conversation between a second employee and a customer I caught the tiniest bit of on the way out. The employee was explaining the best way to shoot a groundhog in the garden. 

Oh yeah.

That happened.

When we had collected everything we needed (bullets, clay pigeons, ear protection, eye protection) we headed out into the rain to begin shooting. I am not exactly sure what I expected. It’s not that I didn’t expect what I saw, but I also didn’t not expect it either. In any event, there was no way I was in any danger of being mistaken for a deer, or anything other than a confused liberal who had wandered across the Virginia border.  There was a defined area where shooters stood all  in a line, shooting straight ahead at targets located at various distances. This greatly lessened the chances of getting shot, making my pink scarf unnecessary.  

 Friend1 showed me how to load the shotgun (which life has taught us is also known by some as a "boomstick") and how to load the clay pigeon launcher. Both were of equal difficulty. I learned that pumping the gun causes the useful result of actually moving the bullet into the chamber from which it is fired, and is not, in fact, simply an action used by men in movies to make themselves look really cool while making a dramatic sound.  I learned to brace the gun against my body for the kick back, which turned out to be significantly less than I feared.  I had envisioned myself being knocked over violently into the mud.  While I did feel it, it did not affect my balance or cause me any concern. This was pretty exciting.

But not as exciting as my 8^th or 9^th try at the flying orange discs when I actually shot one in the air.

“Holy shit!” said Friend3. “You hit it!!”

“Did I?” I said, confused.  “I did???”

“Yes…you did,” said Friend3

“THAT’S AMAZING!!”  I got quite excited for myself.

From there we moved over a few yards to shoot a handgun.  I am pretty sure I did manage to hit the paper the target was printed on, which is probably enough accuracy to at least slow down an advancing zombie. Looking three targets over to the right, I saw that instead of the traditional circular target someone had affixed a sketch of what appeared to be a zombie Osama Bin Laden.  At least, we are assuming it was supposed to be specifically Bin Laden.

After we had all shot many rounds into an unsuspecting paper, a voice on a microphone explained that everyone should finish their round, cease shooting, and when everyone had ceased, a red late came on over each station and everyone was safe to inspect or change their targets.  During this time, Friend1 suggested I take a little walk down the line to see the guns being used by others.  I wandered off, hands in my pockets, trying to look natural, and hide my total horror and terror at the sight of some of the weaponry others so very near me were using for their target practice.

After 1.5 hours I needed to head back to the safety of the North, so we packed up and drove out into the continual rain. Verdict? I still don’t believe people should be keeping the types of weaponry so many Americans keep in their homes. That shit’s ridiculous.  What we need in this country are high powered taser guns.  I say let every American home have one or ten of those.  Taser the crap out of intruders and the children and neighbors you mistake for intruders.  Enough to knock them unconscious for a good ten hours. I can totally get behind that.  However, I do now see the appeal of sport shooting in places like gun ranges and I also believe in hunters being able to have certain types of guns for hunting purposes.

Anyway, now I know how to shoot a gun (or some kinds of guns) should the apocalypse come.  Take that, ExBoyfriend1. I may survive for 24 hours after all. Provided someone happens to drop a shotgun immediately in my vicinity along with the proper ammunition. And I have at least an hour between each set of 3 zombies in which to load new ammo. Whatever. I’m working on it.