Happiness is a Warm Gun...

I worked dilligently yesterday in eager anticipation of my first night at the gun range. It was one of those tedious and seemingly unending days that caused me so much undue stress that I absolutely felt the need to shoot something at the day's end.

I've worked at Publix for the last four years and have experienced all of the ups and downs the retail world has to offer, especially the undue strain caused by the absence of employees when we are already on run on such a limited schedule. For the last week, we've been experiencing an outbreak of pandemic proportions, causing quite a few employees to call out due to a stomach virus and/or a cold. On this particular day, we were down two managers and two front end associates. As a result of the crisis, I became solely responsible for the smooth running of the checkout experience. Although this is something I have done before, there are days when my preference would be to operate as co-pilot. This happened to be one of them. Not that I am one to shun my responsibilities; on the contrary, I am extremely conscientious when it comes to work, perhaps too much so, to the point that I've found myself roused from a deep sleep by dreams (nightmares?) of memorable customer interactions.

So where was I? Yes, I needed to shoot something. I made the mad dash out of work, expertly changing my clothes on the drive to Matt's house. He took the liberties of driving to Shoot Straight as he'd been there previously, and with his expert manuevering it took all of 25 minutes to cruise from Brandon to Dale Mabry. En route to the range, we passed Raymond James Stadium, lit up like Christmas, with people crawling up and down the stadium bleachers like ants, doing the initial bomb sweep in preparation for the following Sunday's Super Bowl festivities. So as of Monday, it appeared the stadium was explosive-free. Fan-fucking-tastic.

As Matt pulled in and parked the car, I could hear the pinging of metal on metal as the bullets ricocheted of off the back wall of the range. We collected our gear, and walked into the

I had the good fortune of being able to utilize Matt's guns, as well as his expertise in shooting, as I don't know if I would ever muster the courage to fire a gun of my own accord. I needed an encouraging word in my ear, and a scolding if I was doing something incorrectly.