While visiting my family in Texas over Thanksgiving, Gene enjoyed trap shooting one afternoon. He talked about it for days (Like seriously days! It takes twelve hours to drive from Texas to Iowa and he JUST KEPT TALKING!), so I decided that a great Christmas gift would be to buy Gene a clay trap thrower. How hard could it be? Well, it turns out that it is a bit more involved than just having good intentions.
Like all good shoppers, I got online and investigated various throwers (trap shooters to the well informed). I found one with a good rating and ordered it. Once it arrived, I discovered that it was not a complete set and that you needed clay traps to go with it. Why don’t they do like other toys and give you a few to get started? I opened the box and read the directions to find out what size I needed—yes, there are three sizes. So off to the sporting goods store I went.
Now let me be clear about how my day was going. I had a bad head cold and concentrating and figuring things out was not my strong suit on this particular day. When I got to the store, I looked for the gun section and found two helpful looking men stocking the shelves. I asked them where the clay thingies were that you throw out for target practice. No one laughed. One of the men said, “Do you mean clay trap?” and promptly showed me a mile high stack of them. I grabbed a box (gasp, they are heavy) and the man asked, “Do you need shot to go with these?” I said, “Huh?” He said they had 8 packs of shot on sale and it would be good to buy some. I asked to see them and then said, “Oh, you mean bullets.” Okay, I meant to say ammo, but my head was fuzzy and things weren’t processing really well.
At this point, the salesman should have figured out that I was way outside of my knowledge base, so maybe it was out of pure entertainment that he asked me, “What gauge gun does your husband have?” Gauge? I know I have heard that term before, but how am I supposed to know what gauge the gun is? I asked him if they printed the gauge on the side of the gun somewhere. He excused himself (I’m sure he had to go to the stock room to laugh). Then the other, 12-year old looking salesman came over to help. He showed me how to read the gauge and other info on the end of the box. Truly, these things should be sold in sets with everything included! I studied the display and reached with total confidence and picked out a box of shot. The way I see it, shot is cheap, so if I made a mistake we could either give it away or my husband would have to buy a new gun at the After Christmas Sale.
At this point, I huffed my way to the front of the store carrying what felt like 50 pounds of clay and 2 pounds of shot, purchased my goods, slid out the icy sidewalk to realize I couldn’t open the car door while juggling my load. I huffed, and puffed and balanced fifty pounds of clay and “SHOT” on one knee, praying the entire time that I wouldn’t fall and cause a scene. At last, I heaved the contents into my trunk. I don’t even want to think about wrapping and hiding these packages. I’m here to tell you, that the law of good intentions dictates that I’m due some really thoughtful gifts as payback for my efforts.
Note: I was not lucky enough to purchase the correct gauge. Sigh.