The soldier was getting his tools together to start his new job.  Things are still askew from the move to say the least and he’s not been in his tool boxes for 18 months.  Sorting through things in the garage he walks in with a box in his hand.

“Good thing I looked in there,” he said. “This is ammo.  50 rounds, I could probably ward off 10 (-experienced shooters-) with that.”

“Is that how you count bullets?” I asked, having not seen a box of ammo for at least 25 years.

“That’s how you count bullet if you’re in SF,” he said. “If you can shoot. If your name is Dead Eye… that’s what they used to call me in SF,’ he said.

I looked at him like he was lying because I was sure no one ever called him that. If they had, I’d have heard about it by now.

“No, they never called me that. No one ever did. They said, boy you can’t hit the broadside of a barn. You can hit a barn with a bullet nor a bullet with a whole barn if you had one.”

I smiled. “I, for one have witnessed that,” I said. “I have seen your lousy shot.”

He looked at me strangely and almost pissed. “Witnessed what?” he said.

I could see he wanted to know just what I was referring to.  The soldier can shoot, see. Whatever shooting there is, he can do it and I could see in the moment he did not like someone implying otherwise.

“I knew you before you could shoot,” I said. ‘We went out to the desert and I threw those cans in the air. I threw them up for you to shoot and you didn’t hit a damned one of them.”

“Oh yeah!” he said with a little snort.  “You did throw up those cans. You were expecting I could hit ‘em right out of the air – I was just standing there looking at your throw the cans.”

“Yeah, well that’s no way to hit them, is it? Yeah, drive all the way out there and you can’t even hit one can. So much for my Annie Oakley tour,” I said.

I turned and left the kitchen with just a tad better understanding how truly weird we are.  No one can shoot. We just buy a gun and go out and try to shoot cans out of the air, anyway.

Also how strange it is… the soldier is now sniper qualified.  There is just no telling what the people you leave behind are going to do.

Have you ever caught up with someone years after the fact and been surprised at how their life turned out?