“Sometimes it’s just the gang member,” explained one of the handgun instructors, “and sometimes it’s the whole gang,” he concluded, delivering the punchline for why he insists on carrying two clips on his person at all times, in addition to the backup revolver hidden in his ankle holster. For the briefest moment, I wasn’t exactly sure where we sat–were we in an air-conditioned range in Charlotte or were we in, like, fuckin’ Fallujah or something?
They’re not called “clips,” it turns out. This is something I’ve learned in the interim since I last shot, more than four years ago. They’re actually “magazines,” and given the current trajectory of print media, it shouldn’t be too difficult to remember which is which. The class called for neither, though, and only asked we bring ourselves and 50 rounds of .38 ammo.
A simple enough directive, but having never purchased ammunition before, I approached the hunting department at Walmart fully expecting the staff to sniff me out. There’s a complete newbie, the salesperson would think, and we’re going to have to run at least three forms of identification to verify him. I completely overthought this, of course, and no forms of identification were needed. Purchasing a box of Federal .38s carries with it all the gravity of buying a box of Cheez-Its, apparently. As for what happened to those 50 rounds, well, you’ll have to come back on Thursday.
When I crossed the 500-mark on LinkedIn a few months ago, I wasn’t sure whether my disposition toward social media would catapult to highs unknown. Would I discover a proverbial burning bush and recant my previous thoughts on the matter? Perhaps I would command power, unimaginable power, siphoned from the hundreds of souls tied to my profile. Would ticker tape descend majestically from the ceiling? Would someone send me a t-shirt? An e-card, at least?
Nothing happened, as you can imagine. I felt a sense of relief, mainly–freedom from having one less site to check regularly. It was like I had weaned myself off the online rat race. Even if LinkedIn raised the public count to, say, 1,000, it wouldn’t be enough to bring me back. I like logging in once or twice a month, max, to entertain the stray invitations that drop into my inbox. Previously I had portrayed LinkedIn as a kind of Rolodex, but I seldom use it in such a capacity. You know how in war and disaster movies there’s always a wooden bulletin board near the docks, on which friends and family tack letters to find each other? It’s more like that.
Social media aside, I may succumb to my other technological holdout–smartphones–in short order. There is a serious dearth of flip phones available through Verizon, and my Casio Boulder is on its last legs, after serving a heroic two-and-a-half-year tour of duty. But more on that later. I need to catch up on sleep in anticipation for this weekend, which will be packed with shooting of the gun and golf variety. These activities will occur independently of each other, to be clear.
Ground Zero for me lies far, far away, in both geography and thought, and it wasn’t until someone raised the topic during lunch that I remembered the significance of today. I felt like a bad citizen and an even worse New Yorker for forgetting, especially in the wake of poignant photographs of people locked in tribute, with heads bowed for loved ones lost.
When the towers fell, I was eking out the last few days of summer break, probably playing video games. I remember the news cycle churning ferociously, the same footage on loop, and the specter of returning back to Chicago on a plane. I remember, too, the early, fumbling attempts at heightened airport security. Then, days later, “anthrax” became the buzzword, and the postal system–once so staid, so boring–took a sinister turn. All around, there was a frank reappraisal of institutions.
But all this is a distant memory. In some ways, I feel like a dog, stuck in time with minimal recollection of the past. Instead, it’s about the crisis at hand, which in this case means the economy. Heck, that’s been the case for the last few years. Most recently, though, I’ve been wrestling with this feeling of being trapped, and from almost every angle, the answer seems to point to either skill acquisition or sociability. And if that’s where my compass is pointing, then that’s where I must go.