Man Down! Man Down!

It's OK. Nobody panic. Everything's OK. I'm fine. I'm fine. Everything's fine.

Yes, I was there when the shooting at the drive-in occurred, but between nearly a decade of martial arts training, the inherent sang froid from the gene pool that produces paramedics and nurses, the crisis-management skills hard earned by 11 years of fatherhood and the fact that the incident took place a hundred yards or so from me and was over before I realized what was happening, I have to say I came through it all fairly well.

It shakes you though, it really does. To hear someone superficially wounded just 150 yards or so from all my vital organs... it makes you pause, take stock. Sure, you wet yourself a little, just for the look of the thing, to assure your drive-in movie companions don't feel bad for their own embarrassing lack of composure, but what's a little urine in the big picture? And if a little urine is OK, what's a lot of urine, by comparison?

The world got a little smaller after my near-near-death experience, I can tell you. Right around the exact size of my bedroom, in point of fact. I took some days off work and really dug deep to help myself come to terms with and contextualize what it was I had almost been within earshot of someone else losing. I am able to write to you now because I was able to fight through it thanks mainly to my faith in Jesus, vermouth straight from the bottle and reruns of House on Bravo.

That poor cranky doctor with the bad leg. And for some reason he only gets patients in really, really bad shape. But every week, he's a dick to his staff for 40 minutes, talks to that kid from Dead Poets Society, suffers a petit-mal seizure and bing! the answer comes to him, saving the day in the nick of time. It helped put things into perspective: if that gimpy sociopath can save people from being eaten to death by all manner of pathogens, then I can sure as hell put down the Cherry Garcia, get off my ass and get back to... doing whatever it is I do at my job.

If you haven't lived it, there's no real way to explain it to you. Death comes for all of us eventually, my friends. Except, I'm starting to think, for me. I mean, I was so close to actual bullets flying and not a scratch on me. It seems possible--likely?--that I'm actually some kind of indestructible demigod sent here as the vanguard of a race of immortals, to live among you and learn your ways in order to facilitate your conquest from within. When that happens, the lesson here is that the best you can hope for is that this little incident has given me the tiniest taste of what it is to be human. When my people arrive in force and it is my job to decide death or a life of perpetual servitude for every living thing on this pathetic planet, maybe that will somehow work in your favor. I don't really see how though, to be honest. Maybe I'll just decide to kill you quickly.