it's all fun and games

When I got home from work today I was so hungry for burritos that I immediately set out for our neighborhood grocery store to buy the necessary ingredients. On my way home I spotted several boys playing on the sidewalk near my apartment building. They were all running around, waving toy guns and making loud shooting noises. As I approached them the biggest boy pointed one of his guns at another boy and shot off an entire round of caps ten inches from his face. In his other hand he clutched a small revolver without an orange barrel-cap or any other telltale markings of a gun replica. After I passed by I could hear them whispering excitedly as they clamored for the best line of sight—I could practically feel their sights on my back. And it made me a little nervous.

You may think that my anxiety was due to an overactive imagination or paranoia or even racism, but the fact is all I could think was that a lot of people are accidentally killed by handguns each year and that most of these accidents are caused by kids screwing around with their parents’ guns. In my mind I worked out which car I would duck behind if I heard a real gunshot, where I would run for help if someone was hit, and how much it would sting if I got shot in the kidney. I thought about how I would never get to eat my much-anticipated burrito and what unanswered questions I would leave behind for my friends and family to ponder—like, what dinner could she possibly have concocted from 1% milk and refried beans? Thinking about how I might die hungry made me mad, and as I strode down the sidewalk I formulated my last request: if I were shot, that I might have the superhuman strength to beat those boys’ asses faster than a speeding bullet.