I am now an official, legal-card-carrying-licensed-member of the legal-card-carrying-licensed-Concealed-Handgun-population of Texas.
You heard that right. Me.
The California-grown-liberal-anti-war-hippie-chick-who-hates-hunting-and-killing-animals, can now carry a concealed weapon, of any kind, in any place that's legal in Texas or any reciprocal state in the country.
When I took the required 10-hour course several weeks ago, I was a little concerned that I would freeze up once we got to the range and had to actually fire a weapon.
Fortunately, I didn't and I ended the class with a perfect score, on the range and on the written test.
I was however, a tad bit concerned in the ensuing weeks while waiting for the actual license that the issuing agency would come across that minor incidence of pot possession back when I was eighteen and thus have cause to reject my application.
The question on the form was not "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?"
The question was "Have you ever been arrested?"
Of course my answer was "no" because in my mind, one constitutes the other. And besides, I was young and stupid, the charges were dropped, I did my obligatory one week in Bob Wiley's Hotel, and my records had been sealed many, many years ago.
But at the time, I did consider jumping up and breaking into a rousing chorus of Alice's Restaurant, when Arlo Guthrie answers the same question ... "Have ya ever been arrested?"
"... and I proceeded to tell him the story of the Alice's Restaurant Massacre, with full orchestration and five part harmony and stuff like that and all the phenome ... - and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, did you ever go to court?"
And I proceeded to tell him the story of the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and the paragraph on the back of each one, and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, I want you to go and sit down on that bench that says Group W .... NOW kid!!"
I decided against it though.
No way was I ending up on that Group W bench!
(For you younguns out there who have never heard Alice's Restaurant, or for you old farts like me who just want to relive the happy-hippie times, here's a link to the full lyrics: http://www.arlo.net/lyrics/alices.shtml. ENJOY!)
