target
yes, i hit him over the head with a skillet. he was walking down the aisle with a machine
gun hanging from each shoulder like someone in a bang-bang movie and when he
passed, i picked up a skillet from the shelf and smacked him on the head,
knocking him out cold. one good smack is
all it takes, i know that. then i yelled
for someone to call the police.
i cannot believe it, i just cannot believe it, my heart
is still pumping like a locomotive. isnt
that a funny word? loco motive. well, anyone
with a soul would have done the same thing, im sure of that. im no hero, im just an american citizen. i could see things were going to go bad, real
bad every which way, when i saw him with those guns. i didnt think about it at all, i just saw the
opportunity to stop a disaster and i grabbed that skillet and i didnt take any time
to be scared. i wonder why no one else
could see what was coming?
oh, im not afraid of death, its a friend i get closer to
every day. im not rushing breakneck
toward it either like some self-absorbed ninny, im telling you that, but im not
fearing it. of course, i would like to
finish a few things before i go, the quilt for my granddaughter, a book by checkov
im reading, a watercolor painting for the art club; and petunias didnt get planted
along the edges of all the beds, the nursery did not have enough of the purple ones
and wont have more until next week. it
would be a shame to die without those purple hearts lining the walk to my
door. and, of course, clean the
refrigerator. the first thing people do
when you die is look in the refrigerator and the laundry basket. they want to see if youve been lax in your
daily duties. then they look for jewelry
and silverware but thats another story.
when my sister died, her daughter tore the house from heaven to hell
looking for a pearl broach that belonged to our grandmother. i hadnt seen it in years but was accused of
stealing it. everyone was. that poor girl, her mother dead and that one
thing is what she thought was important.
its funny what we concentrate on, what we think is important. she lived her life wanting that pearl broach
and now she still wants it. but without
family. somehow, the principle of it was
more important to her, that it was her right to have it, and nobody else
mattered.
there were children there. there were old people too, older than me, but
there were children. you have to look
after children, thats what jesus did. you
take care of the children, even if they arent your own; keep them safe, teach
them to be good people, let them know how wonderful they are. i couldnt let something bad happen with all
those children there. i wouldnt have
been a christian if i let something happen to those children. they shouldnt even see that man, it would scare
them for life.
he was a terrorist, im sure of it. you cannot be walking down the aisles of
target with machine guns on your shoulders just shopping for fourth of july picnic
supplies. he has to have had bad
intentions. he was there to terrorize
people. and i wasnt going to let him do
that. im an american citizen and i have
rights in my own country, rights to peace and security and well-being, the
constitution says so. my husband was in
the big war and my son, god rest his soul, was lost in a non-war. ill be damned if im going to let some punk
kid dressed in a soldier costume start a bang-bang war in my country. if i can do anything about it, i will. and i did.
america is still a place where everyday citizens participate in the
welfare of the country.
then things got crazy like i was alice in wonderland. after i smacked him on the head with the
skillet and knocked him out cold, someone started yelling “open carry, open
carry” so i thought people wanted to celebrate.
it seemed a little soon for that to me but then im not from here, yes,
people here do seem quite celebratory.
where i come from, we cant open carry, alcohol must be in a sealed
container. but here, i know, you just
drive up to a drive through convenience store but its not a convenience store,
its more of a bar. a drive-thru
margarita bar. a nice young man comes up to your car window and
you tell him what different alcohols and flavors you want and he brings you a
huge sweet slushy drink. and you drive
away, drinking it. where i come from,
you cant even buy alcohol on sunday. they put hazard tape across the beer aisle in
the supermarket. now, that is the
silliest thing, you know that? sunday is
the day jesus drank! and hazard? it is only a hazard if you do too much of it,
just like anything else. but there are
always some people doing too much of things, i know that for sure. i will admit though, i do like a little taste
of wine on sunday, just like jesus. so i
thought they wanted to go to one of those drive through margarita bars to
celebrate stopping a disaster and i said i thought we should wait for the
police, you know, to make sure everything was safe and right.
but then, the store clerks began telling me that open
carry means you have the right to carry guns like that out in public,
anywhere. private citizens with big
automatic guns for bang-bang war. i was
having a hard time understanding this. i
still cannot understand this, you can drive through the bar and get a daquari with
an ouzi on the seat next to you. it doesnt
seem right, i thought they were having a joke at my expense. this all seems like a joke at my expense.
so i asked: it is normal for people to walk around with a
big gun like those doing their errands? if
you need stamps and stop at the post office, you carry your machine gun? no, you cant take a gun into the post office,
they said. you cant take a gun into the
courthouse or any federal building or bank.
so i said, you mean to tell me it is not safe for a judge surrounded by
police officers to have someone carry a gun inside the courtroom but it is safe
for me and the children and everyone else in target to let that man with
machine guns walk the aisles?
it just doesnt make sense. it just doesnt make sense. what did he want to shoot anyway? what was his target? has no
one read checkov?
