- I was shot on a Sunday. It was late and it was hot and I was 21, on my way home from dinner during summer break. I’d rolled the windows down because the breeze felt good.
I pulled up to a red light, about half a mile from my home in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. “Yeah!” by Usher was playing on the radio. A silver Toyota Tacoma turned the corner. As it passed me, I heard a pop. Then my left arm was on fire.
If you’d asked me before that night how I might react to being shot, I would have said: I would call 911. I would get myself to the hospital. In fact it never occurred to me to call 911, only to want my dad.
I pulled into the Circle K across the street to call him. I looked at the blood blooming across my blue dress. It was new, and I wondered whether the stain would come out. Then I looked over at a girl standing in the parking lot, talking with two boys. Her wavy blond hair shimmered beneath the fluorescent streetlights. I thought about how I wished I had wavy blond hair like hers.
I've noticed something similar - a lot of "gun people" are willing to compromise on things like background checks, age limits, licencing, or wait periods to a much bigger extant than politicians or talk radio guys are. But the loud ones believe giving an inch is a slippery slope. If you want to keep your guns, beto vote for Cruz. From the loud ones on Facebook, of course. Also, shooting an AR-15 is a lot of fun. A bullet hose with so little recoil.Mexican word of the day: "Beto".
This is the point: the crazies are always the crazies. I'm just not sure why we spend so much time acting like they should have a meaningful part of the conversation. Case in point, the author of this story: she talks about how it felt weird to see nuance. God help us.