Be safe: Lock your doors, and avoid others when you’re not wearing a gun

Most of the time I avoid other people, because they’re dangerous: They’ll take everything you’ve got, and if all you’ve got is time, they’ll take that, too.

One way they take your time is by involving you in a long, pointless conversation about nothing,

So I often avoid strangers on the street downtown, not just because some of them ask me for money – some people really are down on their luck, and there but for fortune go we and all that – but because sometimes they want to tell me a long story first.

The other day I’m leaving to go run an errand when I see a guy coming across the street, pulling a little wagon with a lot of stuff in it. So I go back inside and wait for him to pass.

But he doesn’t. He stops in front of my house to finish his cigarette. So I figure he’s going to stub it out in the front planter, and maybe I should get that before my wife finds it, but I’ll wait.

And then, much to my astonishment, he comes up the steps, crosses the porch and starts coming through the door I left unlocked for what I’d thought would be a moment’s delay.

This is why I don’t wear a gun.

“HEY!” I yell at him, and he stops.

“I’m sorry!” he says. “I ain’t doin’ nothing wrong!”

And he’s not, it turns out: He thought he was walking into a lawyer’s office, apparently one where they yell at you. (“Pickem & Shuckum: Come by our office, and we’ll holler at you.”)

So anyway, he goes over to the lawyer’s office, and I go run my errand, which is go to Burger King and get a large, sweet tea, and then spend several hours relaxing at the computer wired on caffeine and sugar.

This subsequent encounter did not immediately ensue, but it did happen at the Burger King:

I pull in the next day to get a sweet tea, and a guy in a yellow hoodie is crossing the parking lot in front of me, and I see an open space I can take before I get up to where he’s crossing.

So I swing wide to get a spot between two other cars, and as I shift to park, I see in the rearview that this guy has veered off course to come up behind me on the driver’s side, where he bangs on my car as he rushes by, flips me the bird with both hands and goes in.

This is why I don’t wear a gun.

Maybe he thought I was aiming for him, when I swung wide to get the space. Who knows? You can’t account for other people’s delusions, these days.

As I get out to go inside, an older gentleman in the parking lot yells, “Hey! What’s wrong with him?”

I shrug and laugh: “Beats me.”

He says something to the effect of “You can’t act that way.”

That’s OK, because if that guy is so lacking in self-control he’ll do that once, then he’ll do it again, perhaps to a big, shiny pickup truck in which the owner has invested not only a lot of time and money, but also much of his identity, as a man, even changing the bumper stickers every couple of months so they don’t fade or fail to keep up with current political issues.

A motorist like that won’t let strangers who don’t work at the auto shop touch his truck. And when this quick-trigger pedestrian bangs on it and flips him the double-barrel bird, he is going to reach under the seat, pull out another device in which he takes great pride, and flip the safety off.

And when he’s finally released from jail months or years later – having lost his job and home and sold his truck for bond money on charges of murder and aggravated assault – he’ll be the pedestrian, pulling a little wagon with all his stuff in it, looking for a lawyer’s office.

Sometimes it’s better just to avoid strangers.

This story was originally published March 25, 2018 at 3:53 PM with the headline "Be safe: Lock your doors, and avoid others when you’re not wearing a gun."