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Home Security
By Milt Abel | July 31, 2011
| July 31, 2011Home Security
Last week, when someone went nuts with a gun and bomb in Norway killing 92, your thoughts naturally drift toward protecting yourself. I’m not sure what I would have done in the situation, the guy was dressed as a policeman, encouraging his victims to approach him for safety where he promptly shot them. Betrayal is one of the last things I want to think before I die; if I had a choice I suppose I’d like my last thought to be something like, ‘let me rest a moment, then some more fun!’ Realistically, I suspect my last thought will be more along the lines of wonderment: “Is this outlet grounded?”
I heard news of this tragedy just before leaving for a 2 1/2 hour drive to a gig a wonderful little hole in the wall diner called Dave’s, in the small town of Milton, Washington. It was fun to work in a city with the same name as mine, and I asked locals if they were familiar enough with the town to call it Milt. A nearby town had the native America name of Puyallup (pronounced ‘pew-lup’) and my opening joke, after mentioning I had the same name as their town, was mentioning my relief that my parents didn’t name me Puyallup.
Here’s the audio snippet from the show, that joke puyallup
With all that time in the car I ruminated on guns and violence. We don’t have guns in our house. I’m not too worried about sharing that over the world wide web, we do have two dogs, big dogs, and their first job is home security. Actually evidence indicated their first job is to poop in our yard, but after that it’s home security. And shedding, their first job is pooping in the yard, then shedding, then protecting our house.
They would throw themselves at an enemy armed with a bazooka with no skittishness. They’ve scared me when their protective mode gets engaged, it’s usually when the kids are playing too rough and accidentally appear to be threatening my wife, Janie. Everyone stops immediately when those front teeth are bared and we slowly and cautiously try and move the dogs back to Defcon 1.
My wife and I are of similar minds on this gun at the home thing. A gun, as opposed to a dog, has no owner loyalty. An intruder could never ‘sick’ our dogs on us, and ‘sentimental ’ is never used in characterizing a handgun: should an intruder get his hands on the homeowner’s piece, it’s not going to break down weeping, “But that’s my former owner!” and refuse to fire.
There’s also no scenario where I’d be at peace using a handgun. (an ironic pun of a sentence, that). If I did have a gun in the house, and I heard a noise downstairs, and I armed myself and crept up on whoever was creeping in my house; I wouldn’t want to be the first to fire. Maybe he’s unarmed, if he’s armed, is it a real gun? Is he just as hesitant to shoot as I am and no one needs to shoot at all? I wouldn’t want to be the second to fire -for obvious reasons. So that moves me up to only wanting to fire if I’m number three or higher in the shooting order. There’d have to be a firefight in my living room before I’d want to join in, mostly from feeling left out.
And let’s not get started about all the stains in the carpet from that melee. Staining the carpet is job number four for our dogs. If someone does break in, and they’re stealing the rug, I’m going to to let them.
TweetTopics: comedy, humor, travel | 4 Comments »
July 31st, 2011 at 12:53 pm
Dear Mr. Abel,
Please explain to me how something could be a “‘whole’ in the wall…” That would make the item at issue the entire “thing;” hereby, the entire wall. Actually, it then should be “whole OF the wall,” but let’s just deal with one problem at a time.
Now, if it’s a small wall, then Dave’s would correspondingly be a small diner. But what is small? Men have been asking themselves that for centuries, and women have been telling them.
I, myself, had to rebuild 7 linear feet of a block wall after the 1994 earthquake. 7 linear feet would be considered small, unless your the one pouring the concrete. So, to me it was a big wall. If, however, you were comparing it to The Great Wall of China, then my 7 linear feet would be akin to someone’s life span compared to geologic time. (By the way, does your audience think much about geologic time while you’re on stage?)
Anyway, getting back to the original discussion–I am still at a quandary as to how big Dave’s is….the diner, that is.
Veronica
July 31st, 2011 at 12:57 pm
P.S. Make that “your” a “you’re.”
July 31st, 2011 at 1:20 pm
thanks for finding the hole
July 31st, 2011 at 1:22 pm
If your talking about the ‘your’ in the first sentence I disagree. But my credibility as an editor is shot to poop -so you may be right. Couldn’t find another ‘your’ but I have trouble focusing after shooting my editorial poop.