(note: as you can see, I have at least some small knowledge of guns, but I am nowhere near an expert. I know a bit from being around them, not from actually trying to learn about them)

I had said in a previous post that I should mention the situation with Empty Ellie and guns. And then...something happened recently that made it all just extra special and relevant, so I'm trying to take the time to post.

This first story takes place when I was high school. I was definitely a teenager, probably around a freshman in high school. I've always known my parents have guns; I'm from a rural part of the country, and gun shows (complete with gun raffles) are A Thing. I went to many of them as a child. I still don't understand the connection with gun shows and making that fenced in area where a person and a dozen angry snakes are all thrown in together and they time how quickly the person with the snakes can get them into a sack without being bitten; fastest person gets a prize. Why, oh why is that a thing?

But I digress. My parents had guns before I was born; they inherited a fair number of shotguns and rifles from both sides of my family. To my knowledge, neither grandfather owned handguns. Back in their day, those were for the po-lice or the mob.

My dad kept a pile of shotguns and rifles in the basement. He had an area that had cords of wood, a coal pit, and then another small squared off area where some number of guns were sitting on their butts, pointed upward at the house, but presumably long-unloaded. As far as I could tell, they were kept oiled and free of rust, but not in fine working order or anything.

I was taught not to fuck with the guns, and other than doing some target practice in the mountains with my cousin as a kid, I didn't have much to do with them. My dad wasn't a hunter, and though other relatives volunteered to take me, I wasn't interested. Honestly, shooting deer for fun seemed to me...I'm trying to find an appropriate word for it...pathetic. If you need meat, great. But if you're doing it because you think it makes you manly to shoot an herbivore...pfft. Not interested.

Anyways, the riffles and shotguns are in the basement. Sometimes we go to gun shows, but I don't really pay attention to what my parents are doing. I'm either trying to figure out why people go in that damn angry snake area or reading a Mercedes Lackey book and wishing that I could be in Valdemar with Elspeth and Selenay (see my user name? think about how it might be pronounced for a second, and you'll get a good idea of how those books saved my childhood, if you know them).

When we're not at a gun show or I'm not in the basement, I don't really think about the guns. Until the day I started this story with. On the day in question, I put once of those green facial masks on that were all the rage in the 90s. As always, I applied it to my face, under my chin, and partway down my neck. However, I totally forgot to pull out a washcloth before I put it on. And if anybody remembers those, you cannnot move your face around much with one on, without the dried clay flaking everywhere. Getting that on EE's bathroom carpet (yes, all the bathrooms were fully carpeted) would not have ended well for me.

So when I go to the bathroom to clean it off, I have to keep myself still from the shoulder up, bend my knees, open the washcloth drawer, and just use my fingers to sort through and find the washcloth I want. We have two types: these fancy colored ones that are the "good" washcloths and these thinner white ones that I use, because I'm not allowed to use the fancy ones (no loss there for me; I didn't like their texture).

The top ones are always the fancy ones, so I carefully feel my way down the pile. Fancy washcloth, fancy washcloth, fancy washcloth, fancy washcloth, fanc-...no, wait, what's this? It's not a washcloth. It's hard and cold and nubbled. I slide my fingers around it carefully, until I can lift it up to where I can see it. It's a handgun.

It's a handgun in the washcloth drawer of my mom's bathroom upstairs

I don't know much about handguns, but I keep my finger away from the trigger guard and try to figure out how to tell if the gun is loaded. It's not a revolver; clearly there's a magazine in there. Best to assume it's loaded. I find the safety; it's on red. I don't know (at the time) if red means "off" (turns out it means the safety is off "red means dead"), and I really don't want to risk setting it the wrong way.

So what do I do? Well, I really just wanted to wash this damn face mask off, not be contemplating why Empty Ellie of all fucking people has a handgun in the washcloth drawer, so I decide to put it back. I place it back in the bottom of the drawer, barrel pointed towards my parent's bedroom; this is actually safest option. As I've mentioned before, Empty Ellie is a hoarder, and my parent's bedroom is nearly entirely hoarded. The only thing they can reach in their is their closets that they still keep their clothes in. I have the barrel pointed further into the room.

I wash my face and I decide to tell Empty Ellie that I think I don't want to cramp her style anymore in the mornings, when we're getting ready together in that bathroom (and often do anything from snipe to full on screaming fight at each other). I'll move to using the laundry room. It has a mirror and a large washing sink. If I need to pee, I can just do it real quick and then head down there. She agrees, and I spend the next few years avoiding being near that bathroom with her. I also periodically check on the gun. It's still in there, but clearly is moved around sometimes. I always rearrange where the barrel is pointed.

Years later, I ask her about the deal with the gun. She tells me how on the news, they were saying that home invasions were getting more popular, so she wanted the gun in case of one (I'm pretty sure that at this point there had been a total of 0 home invasions in a 20 mile radius to our home, but whatever). I further inquire about why the gun is in the bathroom of all places. Oh, she says, because when she poops, it takes so long. She figures that's the most likely place she'd be if a home invasion happened. I point out that the washcloth drawer that the gun was in was right next to the bathroom door, and the toilet is a good 4 feet away from it - wouldn't the drawer next to the toilet be a better option? At this point she gets pissy and points out that the drawers next to the toilet were for her makeup and hairbrushes and that the gun would not have fit.

At this point I just give the fuck up. Trying to understand her logic will only make me wish for a gun.

And thus ends the first part of the saga of Empty Ellie and guns

edited for typos