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A weird thing happened to me while I was hurringly rushing to the hospital this morning.

Ya know how sometimes you’ll see something that is sooooo outside the realm of your comprehension, so out of the ordinary, so completely bizarre that you simply stare at it totally uncomprehendingly for seconds until you realize and somehow rationalize and understand what it is you’re seeing?

That’s what happened to me.

I was driving to the hospital and between traffic lights the traffic slowed and stopped briefly before creeping forward. I was listening to a book on CD and I was late and I was thinking maybe I could just push the entire standstill into the hospital parking lot snowplow-like with MR.GREENE. when I found myself watching a telephone pole being wrenched back and forth, juking and jiving  and twitching and jerking to the absolute limits of the utility cables attached to it.

At first I didn’t know what to make of it. Who ever sees telephone poles being pummeled back and forth? And why ever would you?

And as I crept closer, urging the little car in front of me with MR.GREENE’S massive bumper I saw that somehow, some kinda weird way, a little red Mustang had hit the telephone pole, snapping it off at the 10 or 12 foot mark.

The Mustang was resting upside down in the intersection on it’s crushed roof, smashed plastic body parts littering the street and it’s fluids leaking. There were several good samaritans already running towards the car, screaming into their cell phones so I put mine away and slowly sidled around the wreck and the now gently swinging broken telephone pole.

But as I drove the last half mile I had to wonder. I had to wonder how a car ends up like that on a straight road with a 30 mile-an-hour speed limit at 8 o’clock in the morning. And I had to wonder if the person or persons in the red Mustang survived what their life or lives would be like.

And I just had to wonder at the fatality of it. I’m guessing the person driving certainly did not wake up this morning thinking their day would end quite so abruptly and violently. I’m sure they were as surprised as anybody.

And too, as I eased past the wreckage, not only was I thinking my day was gonna be no where near as sucky, I was thinking about Fate and what if, we really don’t have any choice in our lives?

I mean what if it’s all pre-ordained? Set in a stone we don’t get to see.

And then I said, shit dude. Thoughts like that are at LEAST two pay grades above your feeble brain. Let it go.

And I did.

But that’s what we do, right?

A century ago I went to my first Hunters Feast.

Way back then the Hunters Feast was an annual event hosted by local kill dudes coming together to share their season’s deer and boar and bear, eating and drinking and partying and donating proceeds from the invitation-only ticket sales to charity.

It was something I had wanted to attend and was finally invited to. It was cool. It was fun. It was something I felt privileged to attend.

Yesterday I went again. Miss Carol wanted to go too but she lacks the necessary genitalia- yup, you guessed it- it’s a boys only, no girls allowed, event.

And it was, um, interesting?

Like so much in our world, the Feast has moved on and grown and it’s growth has outstripped the local hunters ability to provide the fare. Now it’s mostly catered. A century ago it was several hundred hunters and select invitees partying. Yesterday it was 4 or 5 thousand guys milling about, drinking beer, pissing in the woods, and eating duck, pig, rabbit, squirrel, lamb, goose, deer, bear, boar, brisket, and something called GUTS. Not to mention the chowders and the stews and the jambalayas. And let’s don’t never forget the Rocky Mountain Oysters and Hogs Nutz. It was all there in crispy goodness and it was all good.

A century ago I think it was the novelty coupling with the newness and wrapping itself up in the exclusivity that painted my memories of the Hunters Feast in such glittery happy shininess.

Yesterday? Not so much.

I’ve never been much of a hang out with the guys kinda guy. I don’t golf, I don’t do guys night out, I don’t wanna segregate myself from chicks to have a good time. In fact, just the opposite. I dig chicks and actually prefer female company. They’re just cooler and more fun.

So being around all those guys and what with all that testosterone muddying the air, it flat wore me down. Two hours after the bunch of us got there I was ready to split. Unfortunately that was only about halfway through the event and the guys I was traveling with were guy’s guys thriving on total immersion in a boys only world. They were more than happy to get away from wives and girlfriends.

So I drifted around, drinking beer after beer and sampling everything I could (except the creamy GUTS-nope, no way) until the raffle was done and I didn’t win the shotgun and it was finally time to head home.

WooHOO.

Except that rounding up five other extremely intoxicated guy’s guys intent on STAYING in a boys only world can be kinda tough. Kinda like herding puppies- we’d get a couple together in one place and another one or two would drift away back to the beer truck and buddies they swore they hadn’t seen yet.

We finally got everybody corralled and moving in the right direction and our designated driver drove us home blasting waaaay over-bassed music.

And the whole way home I nursed a beer and itched to balance the stereo and swore.

Never again, baby. I’m full.

Well I’ll be goddamned- there’re still REAL pirates out there.

I mean who’d a thunk it? In this day and age when technology trumps everything and GPS can track little kids walking home from school or triangulate car accidents and send rescue almost as soon as your air bags burst that something as anachronistic-seeming as real pirates still exist kinda bends the mind.

I mean, really?

And yet, out there in the cold salty spray of the Indian Ocean Somali pirates armed with automatic weapons are loping about in small open boats and preying on ships and shipping seemingly willingly at will.

The World denounces them and their piratical ways. Like they care. The pirates, I mean. At last count they held more than 660 hostages and around 30 vessels that they use to pirate more vessels if the owners can’t or won’t pony up the big bucks to release them, running them until they’re used up pieces of floating garbage.

A part of  me, hopefully the biggest and best part of me, joins in the denunciation and wonders why we (we being the rest of the world) can’t just rock and roll into Somali and kill everything looking remotely pirate-like.

But. And yet.

A little squeaky part of me, and probably the part that still hopes I’m not the big pussy I am, secretly cheers for the loping pirates. I mean, can you imagine attacking a bazillion ton container ship from a 26 foot panga?

Does desperation breed courage or is it vice versa?

I own guns.

There.

I said it.

Not a lot- a coupla rifles and a pistol grip 12-gauge. I don’t have any problem with guns or with people owning guns or with people carrying guns concealed or otherwise. Shooting guns is FUN. If you’ve never done it, try it. Honest.

I’m not one of those people that believe if you get rid of guns you’ll get rid of senseless killings. Setting aside the extremely random shoot-em-ups, people will find a way to kill one another if they really want to, whether it be by bullet or knife or baseball bat or rock.

Nor am I one of those people that believe that if we don’t have guns the wurrrrlllddds guuuunna ennnnndddd.

I just think playing with guns is like gay marriage or abortion or breast implants. If you’re an adult and you wanna do it and you’re not hurting anyone else, fucking do it and please, oh please, can’t we just STOP talking about it? (I can’t wait to see the e-mails I get ’cause I just compared guns to breast implants)

So I was surprised by my reaction to something that happened on Sunday.

I’m down on the Island, working on the doggy dreamhouse, and I’m ferrying shit up the ladder from MR.GREENE. when I see two little kids standing huddled at the end of our dock looking like little kids do when they feel like they’ve been caught doing something wrong.

They’re practically standing on top of the NO TRESPASSING sign we have on the dock that Miss Carol and me hope’ll litigiously protect us were anyone to get on the dock and get hurt. I don’t really care who uses the dock as long as they don’t set in on fire or something.

So I wave to the kids to let ’em everythings fine and I’m cool with it and I go up the ladder with another load and when I come back down the two boys are walking across the lot towards the road. Just walking and talking and cutting up and looking like kids everywhere.

Except they’re both packin’ shotguns.

These boys couldn’t have been more than 10 or 12 years old and they were carrying those big ‘ole guns the way a mechanic carries a wrench. Nonchalantly bleah.

Initially? I was shocked. And even though I have no problem with ’em, they’ve been portrayed for soooooo long as things sooooooo inherently evil that to see them outside of a TV show or a movie is, I don’t know, unsettling? Guns, I mean, not little boys.

But as I watched those kids walk up the street I had to marvel at where I’m at geographically and where we’re at societally. I mean, can you imagine an urban metrosexual coming down here and seeing two little boys openly packin’ heat?

I let my mind run around in it for a little bit and then just shrugged and went back to humpin’ materials up the ladder.

Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas anymore.