Her name is Barbara, but her friends call her Barbie. I am not kidding; she told me this herself. She’s in her mid-40’s, fake blonde and not very bright. At some point, someone did Barbie the disservice of telling her she could cruise through life on her looks alone.
Under some circumstances, I could almost pity her.
That is, unless she’s waving a loaded .357 Magnum in my face.
Somebody put a 5-screw S&W pre-Model 27 in Barbie’s hand. Either they couldn’t be troubled to explain the first three rules of gun safety to her, or she just wasn’t paying attention. But there we were.
I’m told I appeared quite calm when I looked up from my paperwork and into the barrel. In that weird time-lapsed second, I was able to note that the cylinder was loaded with lead semi-wadcutters, and that the pitting on the front of the underlug was likely too deep to buff out. I also went from thinking of Barbie not as a human being, but as a dangerous animal that needed to be put down before it killed me.
She never saw the gun I had trained on her stomach. In fact, the only look on her face was that sort of beatific calm reserved for the mentally infirm and the hopelessly apathetic. I hissed something to the effect that she needed to lower that thing right now.
At this, she seemed to snap to. I demanded to know why she was walking around with a loaded gun. She looked affronted and flustered, then gathered up what little petulant dignity she could conjure. Her response was a sarcastic, “they’re supposed to be that way.”
Wrong answer, Barbie.
There is something wrong with a universe that allows people like Barbie to live to adulthood, but it’s not my job to fix it.
Barbie doesn’t know how close she came to an untimely end yesterday afternoon. If she did, she would likely disintegrate into a shrill, weepy orgy of righteous self-pity.
I’m not sure death would be worse than dealing with that. In any case, I’m glad I didn’t have to choose.