Add Hunting Store to My List
Lately I'm realizing how I tend to avoid doing little and big things that I suspect might make me uncomfortable. However, after surviving a couple art classes in the city and an ice cold baptism in front of my peers, I'm toying with adding all sorts of things to my list and just doing them!
Why, just the other day I picked up the phone when an unknown caller, who'd been ringing my phone a few times daily, called again. "GCS" I knew it had to be some sort of sales call, so I'd been ignoring it to avoid the uncomfortable feeling of saying no...over and over until the caller relents and hates me. This time, I just reached for the phone and picked up.
"Hello?!" {Read: WHAAAAAT?!?!?!!!?}
Long pause where I'd otherwise hang up.
Hi Ma'am (we're your crappy cable company who want you to spend more money.)
"Listen, we're not enjoying the service you're providing us now. We've lost channels we used to have that now we're supposed to buy back. I'm not interested in buying anything else at the moment, we may not even stay with GCS. Please take my name off the list, you've been calling at least once a day." In one single breath - Done.
Scary?
Nope.
Next? Well, Luke wanted a bow for his birthday, which was Tuesday. Normally, I'd Sharpie that right onto Stan's to-do list. The manly things... going to the local hunting shop, beating chests with strange men, critically looking over countless bows to see if the shmark balanced well with the shmiga majig and a lot of talking with men who've hunted....these are things I have not been trained in. But Stan is very not available this week. It's the first week of his new job and he's driving all over New Jersey's half acre, and in this bitter weather he's testing wells all day, every day this week. I knew I'd have step up and bite the bullet.
So, Luke got home yesterday from school and I said, "Let's do it." I put on my coat with the faux fur-trimmed hood (which, looking back, really wasn't as cool an outfit for a hunting store as it seemed at the time), grabbed my credit card (a bow costs what?!) and dropped off six year old at my sister's. (Or else, what's that called? how many guns are there? can I get a compound bow? what is a compound bow? cross bow! what's a cross bow? look at the antlers on the wall...look at the antlers on my head...why is there a turkey tail over there? Mommy! There are 48 rifles on that rack! This stuff stinks!... Plus, he'd be over there shmoozing with every Tom, Dick and Harry chewing tabacca and spittin' in the corner and heaven forbid if one of them gave him a duck call. No. Lose the six year old first.)
So I drove in the general direction of the place, not knowing exactly where it is, but knowing I'd know when I see it snuggled back off the road in the trees. You can't miss it, it's putrid colored stucco and the ancient and serious bars over the only two windows in the joint on the two front doors. This joint has been here longer than I've been alive...I think this is the place my parents bought me a pocket knife engraved with my initials 'JR' once a hundred years ago for a stocking stuffer. Let's put it this way. It doesn't look like a place where one could find anything that looks good, tastes good or smells good. ~sigh~ I don't have one girl, people. Not one. No, it's hunting shacks, skate parks, sports equipment stores and attic bands for me. We walked in. My eyes, focused as through cross hairs, searching for the corner of the store where I might not feel like a deer in headlights. Straight ahead many guns, staring our way stand three old men with white beards who have just returned from a month in the Yukon or coffee at McDonald's, I'm not sure which......Where is that 'boop boop' sound of submarine radar coming from?! My senses heightening, I follow Luke to the left...he seems to be on to something...Are those bows? Many, many camouflage compound bows hanging from the ceiling. A man way down at the end is busily stringing something. Luke proceeds through the room crowded with stuff. The man seems to be aware of our presence, but acts as though he isn't. My mouth opens and I say something, "Could you point us to the bows for boys?" He looks up and responds. That was relatively painless.
He went over to the wall behind the counter and took a bow from maybe 8 or 9 bows hanging there. He handed it to Luke, "Don't let go of the string." "I know," Luke pulled it back a few times and looked at it carefully. He's taken an archery class a few times, so he has a clue. Me? Clueless. I'm just looking around the place. There are weapons and packages, everywhere packages of mysterious things that I could never ever need...jars full of miscellaneous, small items everywhere, on shelves, on counters....nothing makes any sense to my brain which is scanning for something identifiable or familiar. The place is littered and packed with stuff, feathers, scented this, scentless that, I mean, I couldn't even tell you what the clutter was actually comprised of, but I wanted badly to organize it.
"Can I see the one with the red wood?" Luke ventured.
"Nope."
Luke and I glanced at each other during the long, huntingman's pause, such a long pause, I actually considered two reasons Luke wouldn't be able to see it. One, it was already sold. Two, it was owned by someone else, but was in the store to be serviced.
"It's a 50 pounder."
Luke looked longingly at the other bows on the rack, obviously wondering if he could see any others that were his size. Well, it was obvious to me. Perhaps if Luke were a squirrel or a quail, the hunterman would have picked up on his cues too, but the guy just stood there, turning his head to cough his sporadic, nagging, smokers cough and sorta staring like, "Want it or not?"
So, we wanted it, by cracky!
He got a lovely white bow. And 6 arr$ows. And a thi$ng that protects his fingers. And a th$ing that protects his arm. And a thin$g that allows you to unstring the string. And when we got home, he realized that he didn't get a qui$ver.
Nope.
Why, just the other day I picked up the phone when an unknown caller, who'd been ringing my phone a few times daily, called again. "GCS" I knew it had to be some sort of sales call, so I'd been ignoring it to avoid the uncomfortable feeling of saying no...over and over until the caller relents and hates me. This time, I just reached for the phone and picked up.
"Hello?!" {Read: WHAAAAAT?!?!?!!!?}
Long pause where I'd otherwise hang up.
Hi Ma'am (we're your crappy cable company who want you to spend more money.)
"Listen, we're not enjoying the service you're providing us now. We've lost channels we used to have that now we're supposed to buy back. I'm not interested in buying anything else at the moment, we may not even stay with GCS. Please take my name off the list, you've been calling at least once a day." In one single breath - Done.
Scary?
Nope.
Next? Well, Luke wanted a bow for his birthday, which was Tuesday. Normally, I'd Sharpie that right onto Stan's to-do list. The manly things... going to the local hunting shop, beating chests with strange men, critically looking over countless bows to see if the shmark balanced well with the shmiga majig and a lot of talking with men who've hunted....these are things I have not been trained in. But Stan is very not available this week. It's the first week of his new job and he's driving all over New Jersey's half acre, and in this bitter weather he's testing wells all day, every day this week. I knew I'd have step up and bite the bullet.
So, Luke got home yesterday from school and I said, "Let's do it." I put on my coat with the faux fur-trimmed hood (which, looking back, really wasn't as cool an outfit for a hunting store as it seemed at the time), grabbed my credit card (a bow costs what?!) and dropped off six year old at my sister's. (Or else, what's that called? how many guns are there? can I get a compound bow? what is a compound bow? cross bow! what's a cross bow? look at the antlers on the wall...look at the antlers on my head...why is there a turkey tail over there? Mommy! There are 48 rifles on that rack! This stuff stinks!... Plus, he'd be over there shmoozing with every Tom, Dick and Harry chewing tabacca and spittin' in the corner and heaven forbid if one of them gave him a duck call. No. Lose the six year old first.)
So I drove in the general direction of the place, not knowing exactly where it is, but knowing I'd know when I see it snuggled back off the road in the trees. You can't miss it, it's putrid colored stucco and the ancient and serious bars over the only two windows in the joint on the two front doors. This joint has been here longer than I've been alive...I think this is the place my parents bought me a pocket knife engraved with my initials 'JR' once a hundred years ago for a stocking stuffer. Let's put it this way. It doesn't look like a place where one could find anything that looks good, tastes good or smells good. ~sigh~ I don't have one girl, people. Not one. No, it's hunting shacks, skate parks, sports equipment stores and attic bands for me. We walked in. My eyes, focused as through cross hairs, searching for the corner of the store where I might not feel like a deer in headlights. Straight ahead many guns, staring our way stand three old men with white beards who have just returned from a month in the Yukon or coffee at McDonald's, I'm not sure which......Where is that 'boop boop' sound of submarine radar coming from?! My senses heightening, I follow Luke to the left...he seems to be on to something...Are those bows? Many, many camouflage compound bows hanging from the ceiling. A man way down at the end is busily stringing something. Luke proceeds through the room crowded with stuff. The man seems to be aware of our presence, but acts as though he isn't. My mouth opens and I say something, "Could you point us to the bows for boys?" He looks up and responds. That was relatively painless.
He went over to the wall behind the counter and took a bow from maybe 8 or 9 bows hanging there. He handed it to Luke, "Don't let go of the string." "I know," Luke pulled it back a few times and looked at it carefully. He's taken an archery class a few times, so he has a clue. Me? Clueless. I'm just looking around the place. There are weapons and packages, everywhere packages of mysterious things that I could never ever need...jars full of miscellaneous, small items everywhere, on shelves, on counters....nothing makes any sense to my brain which is scanning for something identifiable or familiar. The place is littered and packed with stuff, feathers, scented this, scentless that, I mean, I couldn't even tell you what the clutter was actually comprised of, but I wanted badly to organize it.
"Can I see the one with the red wood?" Luke ventured.
"Nope."
Luke and I glanced at each other during the long, huntingman's pause, such a long pause, I actually considered two reasons Luke wouldn't be able to see it. One, it was already sold. Two, it was owned by someone else, but was in the store to be serviced.
"It's a 50 pounder."
Luke looked longingly at the other bows on the rack, obviously wondering if he could see any others that were his size. Well, it was obvious to me. Perhaps if Luke were a squirrel or a quail, the hunterman would have picked up on his cues too, but the guy just stood there, turning his head to cough his sporadic, nagging, smokers cough and sorta staring like, "Want it or not?"
So, we wanted it, by cracky!
He got a lovely white bow. And 6 arr$ows. And a thi$ng that protects his fingers. And a th$ing that protects his arm. And a thin$g that allows you to unstring the string. And when we got home, he realized that he didn't get a qui$ver.
Nope.
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Kim