Republic, WA

The most shame I've felt in my life was when I accidentally fired a 12 gauge shotgun near Republic in the middle of the day. My step-Grandfather's casual, lighter than air attitude packed it's bags and bordered a flight to any-fucking-where else to ask the oh-so-simple "What was that?" The man saw a joke at the end of every sentence, a slight at every moment of vulnerability. It's an issue with the self; deep within is where your average Joe's demons reside, deeper than he or any one he knows ever goes. We were trap shooting, little orange pieces of clay shot out of a dangerous machine bolted to plywood. I'm not a very good shot, my two young step "uncles" are. I don't even get a chance to miss, so I pull the trigger to release the already cocked hammer. It sounds counter-intuitive, but you have to pull the trigger to get the hammer to fly forward. Your thumb has to turn that flying into stopped dead cold to keep the shell from making a lot of noise, so that you can, lightly, let the hammer rest on the shell. But, I'm not that good of a shot, which makes me not very good with a gun in general. One of the uncles, the younger one, pointed the same shotgun at me about year before, less than 100 yards from where we are now. The hammer was cocked, and he was mad. But he didn't pull the trigger. I did.

As a result, chunks of lead head roughly forward from the barrel at at least 1,300 feet per second. That's almost mach 1.2. Those pellets can beat a 737, at least in the first 100 yards. All you have to do to let that kind of destructive force exist outside of spiritual and literal realm is pull. Just a little bit. Grab the hammer fuck its kicks up you black out (inexperience) and wonder what who oh no why i thought......... But you were wrong. And that little shit, that little fucker that pointed that same weapon at you, with intent but not reason, he's staring at you.

Like you're an idiot.

And you wish he was lying on the ground in front of you, his chest a big chunk of red, meaty redneck flesh chopped up like hamburger helper, right after the seasoning drops in.

But he's not laying there on the ground. No one is. The only victims some helpless O2 molecules scattered around you, and some ants on the hill 400 feet away.

That little bastard, while not the brightest among us, did not fire that gun when he pointed it at me. He had experience with guns, and may have never even intended to fire it. The one who didn't know what the fuck he was doing fired it, thankfully at nothing. So, with your back against the wall, give any projectile weaponry to the shell-shocked desert storm vet. The bat can go to the scared housewife, the zombies will get her first anyway.