Saturday, July 05, 2008

I believe that in military parlance what they call this is mutually assured destruction--in a spaghetti western, perhaps a Mexican standoff. In any case, my move would be met with equal force on your side, and I find it likely that neither one of us will come out of this maneuver alive.

I wanted to push through those saloon doors with guns blazing, knocking all of this year's dust off of my spurs, top lip a-snarl, but you just had to be sitting at the corner table of the same damn bar, hat pulled low, counter-measures at the ready. Prepared to fire at my feet until I improvised a jig. In a world that was aligned properly we would be sitting at the same table, boots propped on adjacent chairs, reminiscing about that time herding cattle and finding a nugget of gold just shining at the bottom of a stream, taking it home and making it into new teeth. In a world that was aligned properly our smiles would blind our adversaries.

Instead, you are trying to shoot off my toes, face creased in a grin, no gold in sight.

Someday I need to learn to remember that just because my brain thinks something is a good idea doesn't mean that it actually is.

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