Chapter In My Pretend Book
I’ve shot at a lot of ranges, and learned lots of rules you’ll never see posted on signboards. Like, “Never say the words cheese or mother to the range tech wearing the aluminum-foil hat.” At another, “If the range-resident raccoon takes an interest in your lunch, just back away and don’t whistle!” They’re the kind of rules all the locals know — and visitors learn the hard way.
I have a certain history with snakes, spiders, centipedes and other creepy-crawlies. I’ve spent a chunk of my life lyin’ doggo in situations where I had to let `em slither & skitter over my camo-clad self in strict silence, and I did not get used to it. Instead, I developed a barely-controllable case of the Extreme Heebie-Jeebies. When I saw the men’s room at one particular range, my first, second and third inclinations were to tiptoe into the dank-drippy swamp beyond and take my chances with the copperheads and cottonmouths. But others were going in, and I had urgent business to conduct, so…
It was a “basement” facility, though it looked like it had possibly been built above ground, and then submerged into the muck on its own, like a mossy, stone submarine. The first three warped, wafer-thin plywood stalls looked bad enough, but the last one on the right, butted against the mud-weeping rock wall was, well … foreboding. I noted that men were waiting to use the other stalls; not the fourth.
It wasn’t just the shoulder-squeezing width, the fine patina of dust on the toilet lid, or the strangely yellowed, unused appearance of the toilet paper that disturbed me. After re-conning the seat and taking the throne, I realized what it was: the eerie feeling of — you ain’t alone, dude. I finished hurriedly, and reached for the TP.
Rotating the roll brought the owner of that paper up into fighting position — a fist-sized spider, straight outta science fiction. I recoiled left, rubbin’ the rock wall and instantly felt something scurry onto my shoulder. Have you any idea how huge a 5″ centipede looks when he’s reared up on his back fifty legs, wavin’ the front 50 at you, 3″ from your nose?
I paid for damages to those fragile stalls — the ones which had stood — past tense — between me and the stairway. I apologized to all and sundry for the deafening screams. One fellow who had been severely constipated thanked me. He was cured. And I wrote in my book: “UN-Written Range Rule #30: The far right stall is unused for a reason. Try the swamp.”
Connor OUT