High School

So apparently, Greencastle-Antrim High School graduation was this morning- I didn’t notice, because I stopped paying attention to my hometown nearly a decade ago. But someone had added me to the facebook group for my graduating class, and I got a notification.

I started clicking names and perusing photos out of idle curiosity, realizing immediately that I don’t know most of these people. Their names and faces are foreign to me. I was about to give up when I found this photo (faces redacted for privacy, obviously):

Just… Jesus Christ. There’s a lot to unpack here. So let’s do exactly that.

One, we’ve got a culture here so deeply influenced by gun culture that they’re holding massive firearms at a celebration of union. Look at those things! Those aren’t hunting rifles! Unless you’re hunting people, which they probably did to consummate their marriage. RIP photographer.

But also let’s have a look at how they’re holding it. Now, coming from Buttfuck, Nowhere, Pennsylvania, I actually have had some training in firearm safety, and… OOF. Look at the idiot on the left. If that gun goes off, it goes flying straight down. And they’re also deaf in that ear. Once it goes flying, it could hit a twig on the ground, or a mouse could step on the trigger, or any number of seemingly unlikely scenarios could happen and POW now someone’s dead.

Now, let’s have a look at the idiot on the right, who seems determined to shoot their spouse IN THE FOOT. Maybe it’s intended as poetry- reinforcing the idea that a spouse is a “ball-and-chain” by removing their ability to walk. “It’s okay babe! I wasn’t using that foot anyway.”

The part of me that’s been surrounded by NRA-haters for most of my adult life wants to say “what the fuck” but the Greencastle kid in me is just like “Yep. This sure feels like home.”

And it sure does feel like home, let me tell you. Because last night, 13 people were killed by guns like these in Virginia Beach.

I’m never going back to Greencastle.