Thug Life Part II

I'm not sure this story will translate and be as funny to you as it was to me, but if there's any hope, you need to read this in the mindset of a 7-month pregnant first-time mother-to-be.

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One of the couples we knew here in Nashville just packed up and moved to Washington DC this past weekend. Having just recently relocated ourselves, we had approximately 1700 boxes we donated to their moving cause. I mentioned to them that I've been missing a pair of shoes ever since we moved here and hopefully one or both of the shoes was in one of the boxes.

So when he called me last Friday, the night before they were going to hit the road to DC, I was hopeful they found my shoes.

"Sorry, dude, we didn't find your shoes," he said.

"Bummer."

"But we did find a gun!"

"A what?"

"A gun!"

"A gun???"

"A gun!!!"

Holy shit! They found a gun in one of my boxes! "Holy shit! You found a gun in one of my boxes!?!"

"Yeah! I'm on my way to your house with it right now."

Holy shit!

Then it dawned on me, "holy shit! You found my gun! I've been looking for that too!"

You see, I do in fact own a gun, but it's nothing more than spring-loaded plastic BB gun. The thing is though, it looks real as shit, which is the only reason I even own it. The logic is that any would-be bad guy that breaks into my house in the middle of the night with anything less than a real gun on his person would instantly be scared away by my real-looking gun. My Plan B if said intruder calls my bluff is a baseball bat under the bed. If the intruder is worth a shit and actually brings a real gun, then I don’t know what my plan is. I guess I hope I remarkably shoot him in the eyeball with one of the bb’s, stunning him long enough for me to relieve him of his firearm then shoot him in the face for real.

While I've yet to have an occasion to brandish the gun with any sort of authority, it has come in handy on several occasions for showdowns with a number of varmint as well as drunken tests of pain tolerance. Even though the bb's are plastic, they hurt like a bitch, especially on bare skin… especially from anything less than 5 paces.

At any rate, after we got a hearty laugh on the phone, I said, "Please tell me you found the gun..."

"Actually, my wife found it... My wife and her mother..."

Holy shit! “Holy shit!”

Like I said, this is the aforementioned 7-month pregnant first-time mother-to-be and her mother. Understandably they freaked out and called him while he was out running around. I can only imagine that conversation.

“Holy shit! I just found the Horst’s gun!”

“The Horst’s what?”

“Gun!”

“Gun???”

“Gun!!!”

Fortunately he was able to determine immediately that it was made out of plastic but unfortunately he wasn’t the one to find it.

I laughed for quite awhile about that but, oh man, I felt bad.

Now you’re probably wondering how I came across such a weapon to begin with.

My younger brother attended a small liberal arts college in Ohio, and by “liberal arts” I mean “liberally available drugs and booze,” which is why I would visit from time to time. Generally those visits were centered around the Halloween holiday, which is a whole other story entirely. If I’m not mistaken, this particular trip was just some random weekend, and by “random” I mean “drugs and booze were randomly available.”

When I arrived at his room in the fraternity house, he and several of his buddies were conspicuously seated around the room until I closed the door behind me and they all produced various sizes and styles of firearms that were previously stashed down their pants or under seat cushions.

I shit my pants until I found out they were just plastic bb guns because they looked real as shit. One dude had a fucking uzi. I’ve seen uzis in Chuck Norris movies, not college fraternity houses.

They explained the guns had recently become a big fad on campus and a lot of the guys were carrying them on their persons at all times, waiting to barrage one another with a hail of plastic bb’s.

Needless to say, I was fascinated and 3 beers later I was ready to see what a bb felt like on bare skin at 250 fps from 3 paces. It hurt. Like a bitch. Twelve hours later I was walking into Dick’s Sporting Goods for one of my own.