Entry Five

I can pinpoint exactly when this whole mess got started. It was a Tuesday night and my wife and I were attending our daughter’s chorus concert being held in the high school auditorium. It was a warm, spring night and the air conditioning, being run from a computer in a town far away, was approximately one hour behind its need, rendering the 50-60 parents in attendance sweaty and irritable. The girls performing in the concert were festooned in long, black dresses and the poor fellows were all wearing tuxes. Exactly no one in the concert hall was dressed for the sauna. The selected songs, being sung with zero passion or intensity, were accompanied by clicks of paper slapping together as everyone tried to stay cool using the concert programs as makeshift hand fans. I amused myself by wiping the sweat out of my eyebrows, trying to time the swipe right before a drop broke free and rolled into my eyeglasses. There was a lot of people shifting and adjusting but I chose to sit infuriatingly still, having convinced myself that less movement equated to less exertion and therefore less moisture production. As people escaped the auditorium for fresh air or a cigarette, the large, metal doors in the back of the auditorium were opened and closed with alarming regularity and not one person was considerate enough to handle the task with patience. The loud slam of the door as it left and returned to its metal resting place was jarring and increasingly annoying.

Some time deep into the second hour of the program, the door crashed yet again and I cringed and shook my head. At that moment I made a silent, unholy vow. I waited and the minute I heard the small click of a hand grabbing the doorknob I stood and shot the person as they walked through the door. My wife said I overreacted and, in hindsight, she was right. If I had known the events that my "attempted homicide" was going to put in motion, I would have counted to twenty and left the pistol in my left sock. Oh, I didn’t kill the person. I aimed low and made sure I hit their leg but, unfortunately, the person I shot was the pastor’s wife. And that’s when it all went to hell.

All words and images ©2005/J. Colle