As we were driving to work this morning, Matt tugged on my shirt sleeve, and when I looked at him, he glanced quickly at his watch and said, "Happy One-year, One-month, and One-day Anniversary!" Yeah, we're disgusting like that all the time.
I've got a weird knot-like sensation in the middle of my back this morning. It feels like a vertebra is about to pop, but it won't. I think it comes from sitting in those awful chairs at the church where my Weight Watchers meeting is held.
But Deby (the WW leader) told us that this particular meeting has gotten so large that they're going to split it into two meetings - one will be half an hour earlier than the current meeting, and the other will be an hour later. I'll be going to the earlier meeting, because it's right after work, which is pretty convenient.
This morning when the alarm went off, the radio was playing "Big Old Jet Air-a-Line-A" which is a song I tolerate, but don't especially like, and I thought to myself, "Boy, is that weird. I was just dreaming about that song!" And then I cracked one eye open, because Matt wasn't turning it off. And then I realized that it was my alarm (we need two) and that I'd probably been dreaming about that song because it had been playing when Matt's alarm had gone off three minutes earlier.
I don't know why, but I was thinking about guns while I was in the shower this morning. I know people who run the gamut from card-carrying members of the NRA to those who not only would never touch a gun themselves but think they ought to be banned altogether. I've never really formed a solid opinion on the subject, but it lies somewhere in the middle.
But that's not what I was thinking about. What I was thinking about was this: For every person there comes a time when you actually understand that people have been killed with a firearm. Sometimes on accident, sometimes on purpose, but those people are dead because they were shot. As soon as you know what a gun is, you know that its purpose is death, but it's a sort of intellectual knowledge. It doesn't seep deep into your brain until later. And what I was wondering was, how do you explain to a child who has just encountered this deeper level of knowledge why, when guns are so dangerous, the government continues to allow us to have them.
But I couldn't think of a good answer.
It's not that I've decided I'm anti-firearms. I don't object to people having them. But I couldn't figure out how to explain it to a child without getting too complicated. It's just one of those things that you have to be a grown-up to understand, I guess.
Two days until I get to see the new Star Wars movie! Wheee!!!! Some of my friends have already seen it - shows began at 12:01AM last night (this morning?) and will be running steadily through the weekend, at least. People who have seen the movie are under strict orders not to say anything about it to me. As I told Karen when she said she had tickets: I don't want to know anything about the movie. I don't want to know whether you liked it, or how long it was, or what the previews were. Nothing. Nada. Zip.
But then I spent a good hour yesterday poking around the Star Wars web site reading character descriptions. I'm so bad.
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