Camaraderie | The Habitation of Justice

Missing The Target on Wubs

Lincoln Adams | November 23, 2009 @ 11:15 am

So this morning I go to the range to get my Beretta on and shoot up some paper, pretending the targets were the very things I loathe most in this world, such as terrorists, songs sung by Jessica Simpson, and broccoli.

I do this every month since I’m part of a gun club that includes a close relative and some people I know from work. It’s usually the same old group of 50-60 year old guys that I have nothing in common with, except that we all like to shoot (them more than me though.) Today however was a little different.

I walked in, and as soon I approached the target room I saw a feminine shape standing by and watching the other guys shoot.

What the… there’s like, a GIRL here? :blink: Who the…

Then she turned and saw me right away, waving. It was Karen from work, a girl I used to majorly crush on once upon a time, though it was a crush that was sadly unrequited. She had quickly met and married another coworker within the span of a hockey season afterwards too. I wrote the backstory on this a few times before, but I won’t repeat it here or I’ll just start crying again.

I quickly got over the initial shock of seeing her and managed to greet her warmly. “Hey, how are you?”

We chatted for a bit while I set things up. She was wearing protective glasses and ear muffs, her long brown hair tied up, looking positively adorable. There were some new dudes here too, and Karen had pointed out that one of them was her husband.

I had never met the guy before, even though ironically enough, the Beretta I own now actually used to belong to him. Here was my chance to finally meet the man that I was passed over for (at least in my own self-loathing mind.)

He looked decent enough, a few inches taller than me and older too, which surprised me. I had seen pictures of him before but he looked much older to me in real life. He also completely disregarded my presence too, which was… awkward. My relative had to formally introduce us before I finally registered on his radar.

“Hey, nice to meet you dude, heard a lot of great things about you!”

He just shook my hand, said a few words, and then went back to shooting. Um… I tried to get his attention again and chatted up some more, using my trademark humor that you have all come to know and love.

“Oh, just wanted to thank you for the Beretta, it’s taken care of so many problems for me, especially now that I’ve learned how to dispose of the bodies properly.”

Blank stare.

“Um, so… hey, has this weather been awesome or what? Think I might go to Little Italy today since it’s been so good.”

Blank stare.

“Okay… so… … I’m… just gonna go back to shooting here.” I walked back to my post and started loading my clips.

Yeah so ok, the man has a personality of a stone. Seriously, she married HIM? I don’t know about you honey, but that 1000 yard stare would creep me out just a wee bit. Maybe he’s just shy though, I dunno. But sheesh dude, work with me a little here.

I watched as Karen and him would sometimes alternate between shooting sessions, and Karen would awkwardly try to shoot a Smith and Wesson six shooter, completely missing the target even at 5 yards.

“I think I know what you’re doing. You’re missing the target on purpose, practicing your warning shots right?” I grinned.

She laughed and giggled. “I think I hate this gun.”

“Yeah the handle’s awful.” I picked it up and the handle was so short I could only grip it with two fingers. Weird. I had no experience with shooting anything other than the Beretta though, so other guns were unfamiliar to me. I let her know that too, and that I just wasn’t big on the gun culture, only coming here to practice and humor my relative. I had to admit I was glad she was there. She probably felt out of place, but I actually did too, and it was nice to have that camaraderie for once.

“Oh, do you need another target?” She quickly walked over the table and picked up another target for me.

I thanked her and she held my arm and smiled. Somewhere in the distance I heard a heavenly choir singing, lifting their voices higher and higher…

“Hey, you wanna try shooting my gun? You might end up doing better.”

“Sure!” She walked over and I loaded a clip and pulled the slide. “Ok you’re good to go, just point and shoot.” I held her arms up so she had a better sight on the target. I happened to glance over and saw her husband chatting with the other guys there like good old boys. Oh, so THEM he talks to no problem? Schmuck monkey.

“Ok, fire away.” I stepped back to watch. She started shooting low but her aim was much better this time. “Just a little bit higher, there you go!” Eventually she was hitting black and had already gone through two clips. She was positively beaming at the end.

“I think I like this one!” She laughed again. My relative had been watching too. “Yep, everybody loves the Beretta,” he grinned.

“See, you just need a little practice. I think you’d end up shooting better than me too, because I’ve been doing this for months and I still can’t shoot the broad side of a barn.”

“Aw, you shoot awesome though!” She laughed and leaned her head on my arm. Her perfume was light and but they still sent me someplace distant and happy. I could feel her warmth, and wondered how she could feel so at ease with me like that. Women, seriously, STOP DOING THAT. These platonic gestures of affection are like burning acid to a love starved dweeb nozzle like me.

But then again… hey, if ya GOTTA do it, who am I to say boo?

Somehow, I managed to get back to planet Earth and we mingled and shot up some more paper until our time was finally up. Her husband picked up the ammo box while she picked up the target paper, the guns and a duffel bag, completely loaded down. I waited to shake her husband’s hand but he had gone back to not acknowledging my existence again and simply walked out. To be fair, it was the same deal with most of the new guys there that I hadn’t met before, and really it’s how most people here behave, so I’ve become used to it.

I turned back and waved to Karen. “I’ll see you tomorrow at work, dear!”

She tilted her head, smiled and held her gaze at me, and for a second I might have seen just a hint of sadness in her eyes.

And then she was gone.

Tags: affection, beretta, camaraderie, coworker, gun, guns, husband, karen, range, shooting, unrequited
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log

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How I got snowed by an old lady

Lincoln Adams | October 31, 2009 @ 12:42 pm

So I was in Panera Bread last night, relaxing and enjoying a bagel sandwich (that I brought from a real bagel shop), when a nice old lady approached me and began to sign in ASL. She had seen that I was hard of hearing and wanted to know if I signed too. Since I had normal hearing otherwise I told her no, but that I’d like to learn it some day (particularly with a smoking hot deaf biddy willing to sign very naughty things to me, but I omitted that part.)

We had a nice conversation, and she turned out to be of normal hearing. It was actually her 18 year old daughter who was deaf, and since her daughter had also seen me as I entered the cafe, I guess they must have been curious about me.

So the lady tells me she has a few free DVDs in her car that were educational videos for those who were deaf, but wanted to learn more about the Bible. In addition to using closed captioning, all the characters would sign in ASL too. I thought it was pretty cool, and I was happy to meet someone who was a Christian, and better yet, someone who would truly understand what it’s like to live with a hearing loss.

She went to her car, came back and gave me the DVDs in a brown bag, then asked me if I was interested in getting a few more to pass around to any deaf friends I might have too, she’d be happy to send them to me by mail. We chatted for a bit more, and then she left.

The DVDs were completely innocuous looking, like something you might find at a typical Christian bookstore. Then I happened to look at the very fine print to see who published the materials. “Watchtower Society.” :wideeyed: Jehovah’s Witnesses?!?! Oh no! No, no, no, nononononononono!! :wall:

I had just given a JW my mailing address, and unwittingly invited an army of religious salesmen to my doorstep to give me no end of grief. God only knows what I’m gonna get in the mail now too. All because I had let down my guard just a little bit because of a sense of camaraderie I had with a sweet old lady. Why, why, WHY do I slip up like this? GAH!!

Sigh, I guess I’ll need to wire my doorbell with a few thousand volts of electricity today. Just in case.

Tags: bible, camaraderie, christian, conversation, cult, deaf, educational videos, hearing, hearing loss, jehovah witnesses, panera bread, Watchtower Society
Categories: Christians Gone Wild

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It’s not women I hate, it’s the human race (or maybe just Christians)

Lincoln Adams | November 13, 2008 @ 8:34 pm

I always get cheesed whenever a woman blows me off or treats me with utter and pointless disrespect, but when I really stop to think about it, I realize I’ve been treated by dudes the same way too, so this is pretty much par for the course as far as my experience with the human race goes. Not that I’m into dudes or anything, but it would be kinda nice to find someone I could be B.F.F.’s with again, since it could help take the edge off the fact that I’ll never find the girl of my dreams because women have all become evil spawns of the devil. Well, at least the ones in New York have.

I remember back when I thought I’d be attending law school, I touched bases with this guy from California. Had a wife, several kids and a job, but felt “led” to pull up roots and head over to the eastern coast to pursue a career as an attorney. At the time I was reading and studying several primers on the law to help me get started, so we traded a lot of emails about the law and about preparing ourselves for the fall semester. Things went south for me so I ended up not attending, but he went on and started his first semester. We still exchanged emails, and we had planned to do a live chat to work on a “fact pattern” so he could better prepare for his next class, and I was happy to help out since I wanted to get the hang of doing these fact patterns myself when it came time for me to start school as well.

And then I never hear from him again. I still sent him an email every now and then, just wanting to make sure he was ok and that he was doing well, but even though I got his read receipts, I never did get a response. I even sent him a Christmas e-card, which he of course picked up but never bothered to say thank you for. And that was pretty much the end of that.

You know, it wasn’t even the fact that I was blown off inexplicably that frosted my rear so much, but the fact that this guy was supposed to be a Christian, and technically that meant I’m supposed to be his brother in Christ, right? So where was the camaraderie or respect, or even just the simple fricking courtesy to acknowledge the help I gave him and maybe say thank you for it? Is this the kind of people I’m going to be meeting up with in heaven too? Great, spending eternity with a bunch of snotheads who were too good to give me the time of day on Earth. Yeah I can’t wait.

Maybe it’s because I don’t attend church, but I usually have a much deeper sense of appreciation for fellowship than my church going dweebs do. A lot of them just seem to flip it off like its meaningless. Really, I don’t get the coldness. It’s not even that it’s cold hearted, but like, no feeling at all.

I know these things happen, and that’s life. I get that. People are jerks, but every now and then this jerkiness really, REALLY grates on my nerves, especially when there’s no rhyme or reason to it. Maybe that’s why I like to antagonize people so much. At least then when they hate on me I totally know why, and I’m cool with it. Heck at times I even revel in it.

But when I’m all sweetness and light and snuggly wuvables, yet still get treated like a compost heap in New Jersey, that’s when I get upset and start writing really bad things on bathroom walls. There’s just no logic to such behavior, at least not one that’s apparent to me. It’s the mystery, the not knowing why people go rogue like that that drives me nuts. One minute everything is fine, the very next I don’t know which end is up, and the worse thing about it all is that I can’t learn from the experience. I can’t figure out what it is I might have done wrong so that I could learn from it and move on from there if necessary. But no, nothing. Just the cold random encounters of life that brings me nothing but frustration and thoughts of mixed martial arts violence.

In a weird way, I guess that’s why I find comfort in being a badass who just loves to rub people the wrong way. There’s something… safe about it, the security in knowing you’d never have to deal with the mystery of why people might hate you so much or disrespect you, unless they happen to see through the facade of course, in which case I’d be screwed totally. :ggrin:

Tags: behavior, camaraderie, christian, Christians, church, disrespect, facade, hate, law, law school, logic, mystery, women
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log, Romance and Relationships

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Park This

Lincoln Adams | August 29, 2006 @ 8:33 pm

I live on an apartment complex that assigns you one parking space per unit (which makes perfect sense since everybody and their mother around here owns at least two cars). Additionally, the town in its eternal wisdom has decreed that no car can be parked on any of the streets adjacent to the apartment complex for more than 4 hours. “F”-ing brilliant. Quite naturally as a result, parking has become a bit of an issue. When I first moved here, I figured I could pull a fast one when parking on the side streets by putting a police decal on my dashboard, indicating that I was on “official police business.” Since that’s what I actually use my car for when I’m working, it wasn’t really that far off the mark. :grin:

Nope, they ticketed my horse anyway. So much for camaraderie, fricking uptight code enforcement dweebs.

The funny thing however was that I managed to get the ticket torn up anyway, due to a long lost friend of mine working inside town hall. She had been my commanding officer back in the days when I was a reserve cop, and by sheer luck she was now working code enforcement. I found out months later that I wouldn’t be ticketed in the future, so long as they knew I was a resident of the area (kind of an unwritten rule they follow to cut residents some slack).

Before I found out about that though, there were times I parked my ride in front the dumpster used by the complex, along with three other cars that did the same thing. I really couldn’t blame them, because there simply was no other place to park, and I figured since they were doing it, no harm in me doing it too.

Nope. I got a letter from the landlord flatly stating how it has come to his attention that certain tenants (read: me) were illegally parking in front of the dumpster, and that if this continued, the cars (read: MY car) would be towed.

So I stopped parking there, though evidently I was the only one who got the memo because the other cars stayed right where they were. In fact another car now occupies the same spot I usually took in front of the dumpster. After asking around, it appears I really WAS the only one who got the letter. Hmmmm. So much for equal treatment.

To add insult to injury, when I’m parking on the side streets, one of the newer tenants has this habit of parking thisfrickingclose to my rear, even though there’s never anybody behind her, and there are always plenty of other spaces on the street where she could park much closer to her unit. This I don’t get, I mean if it were me, I think I’d park my ride a little bit closer than that, and definitely where I could actually see it from my apartment, right?

Today was different though. The car was parked in the same spot as always, except it was missing a few things. 4 tires to be exact. And the rims.

Whoever did it not only left the bolts but the jack behind as well. It was almost comical, but a little weird. For one, why was the car parked 2 feet from the curb, which inadvertently made it much easier for the thieves to jack and boost the tires from that side? And why leave the jack behind? :unsure: The whole thing about it makes me suspect an insurance scam, especially since she didn’t seem overly upset about it when the police came knocking. I would have gone ape, but I guess that’s just me. I guess I’ll know for sure that something was up if she gets new tires, and then ends up parking in the exact same spot as usual.