Atomic Nerds

…free state style. Last week I finally broke down and got a flashlight holder for my belt. Yada yada, sometimes bad guys are in the dark, etc. Mostly I just finally realized hey, if I have a light with me I won’t be squinting and trying to figure WTF I’m looking at in less than brilliant direct sunlight. So far I’ve already been reaching for my flashlight as much if not more than my multitool (though still nowhere near as much as just for a pocketknife). Not only is it useful as hell, but it brings a nice balance to the weight distribution. It does, however, take a bit of getting used to in some respects.

Since weekends are homeowner chore marathon days, I of course had some errands to run around town. And since Los Alamos didn’t get the memo that it’s supposedly the coldest winter since Gramps was killed by exploding trees walking uphill both ways, even wearing a hooded sweatshirt out was pushing the borders of overkill. With that in mind, I grabbed a sweatshirt that normally does fine covering sidearm, magazines, and leatherman but apparently is just a skosh too small to hide sidearm, mags, leatherman, and flashlight.

Standing at the grocery checkout, it was surprisingly slow at the store, so the cashier and I were chatting. The manager, a pleasant enough fellow but not someone I’d conversed with further than general pleasantries and such when he was manning a register was around too. I finished paying and went to leave and in departure from normal, he followed and motioned me slightly aside. I thought I’d forgotten something, but apparently not.

“So what do you shoot?”

Had I mentioned that previous conversations were just “How’s your day, nice weather, etc” already? ‘Cause I hadn’t ever said word one about toys that go bang around him before.

“Well, I’m fond of pretty much anything that goes ‘bang’….” I must’ve looked confused at this point. Turns out my sweatshirt had ridden up over the flashlight. When he saw that, he then noticed the magazine carrier, and from there saw the bulge - still well covered, he was kind enough to point out - on my hip. As it turns out, he’s rather fond of shooting too, and through the rest of the conversation we wound up just shy of actually setting a “Lets go plinking” get together.

Ok, there isn’t really much else to the story, I just wanted to gloat that there are still some places and people downright cool about guns, despite all the hand wringing and doom floating about over things like the college panicking over a single round of ammo. Hell, might even wind up with a shootin’ buddy out of all this too, and given that the closest folks we socialize with other than my parents are a good 45 minute drive off at best (or a couple hours for others), I’d call that a win.

Posted Ballistic Mood Improvers, Our Town |