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No one must know my terrible secret...

House of Noh!

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Two mornings ago this elderly asian guy brushed past me, angling for the sweet spot (if you're going to have to stand anyway) in the wide aisles near the middle of the car. He had on a tan trenchcoat, square gold-rimmed glasses, and an impeccably blocked kangol hat, brim oriented at exactly zero degrees in a very conservative fashion. His shoulder bag was hanging to his side, it caught on mine, and as he passed his bag pulled mine across my body and held him up. He was confused at first at what was holding him, so he kept tugging. Then he looked at me all aggressively, like I was holding the dude's bag, but I was just holding onto my bar, wondering why he was tugging on my bag behind me, so I was just like, "Whu Happend?" The guy then bent down, disengaged his bag from mine, and took one step forward and held onto the bar he had been trying to reach.

Then during the ride downtown the old guy kept giving me this look, sort of out of the side of his face, like how a dog looks at you without pointing its face at you and showing a lot of whites when the dog is angry at you but doesn't want to start a fight. The old guy kept fiddling with his bag, like, closing it up and then opening it up again and looking inside and making sure everything was in there. I think the point he was trying to make was that if I was a pick-pocket, then he was going to find me out. That started me thinking, what if he was a pickpocket? And the more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that a kangol hat was a very suspicious hat for him to be wearing. And when I analyzed him closely, I discovered that he had razor burns in front of his ears showing he had recently shaven his eyebrows shorter (obviously an attempt to disguise himself as someone sportier). So then I started looking in my bag too, giving him an angry look back while I conducted the inspection of my bag's contents for theft. Fortunately, my banana, notebook with pizza recipes scribbled on it, and some glitter pens, weren't missing.

As far as good people to mess with, I think that the elderly asian man couldn't have picked a better person to mess with than me. Case in point: this evening in the grocery store a man (to the extreme embarrassment of his wife) brushed past me taking his shirt off and challenging another guy to a fight while shouting, "I'll show you how to accidentally bump into people in the grocery store!" (I'm paraphrasing)

All I said was, "that's entirely unnecessary," and I said it quietly.

Counterpoint: if you've ever seen the mail I get, military surplus catalog shopper that I am, you would probably be under the impression that I'm NOT a good guy to mess with (although I am). The other day I received a thick envelope in the mail, and above the address window in large font the envelope read, "DOES IT MATTER WHICH GUN YOU BUY? (Springfield Factory Comp 1911-A1 OR Brolin Arms Pro-Comp; Colt's .38 SF-VI OR EA Windicator (each pictured in thumbnails on the cover)) YOU BET YOUR LIFE!" (get it?) And that's just my junk mail.

BTW, if you're wondering what kind of gun I'd buy in each class, the answer is neither, in either gun class. For a .45, I'd pick a Para-Ordinance semi-auto for the unique double column magazine (this model of gun is the sweetheart of famous pistol-fighting writer Massad Ayoob because it combines the stopping power of the larger .45 cartgridge with the firepower of a 9mm pistol). And for my holdout pistol (which I would carry in an ankle holster), I'd buy a stainless steel Smith & Wesson .38 hammerless with a three inch barrel.