Last week was the finale of our Friday night mixed curling league.
The club was full of excitement, what with all the sweeping and all the taking out of rocks and then the big tie that Sven broke when the two skips each threw one stone to claim victory and Sven's rock landed closest to the center of the house.
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WE WON!
"Good Curling," we all said, and shook hands.
Following proper curling etiquette, we had a drink in the club house with the opposing team.
And when we finally got home, we weren't a bit sleepy.
Na-ah, no way.
We were ready to rock and roll.
The car was parked safely in the garage and the keys were hanging securely on the hook. What could possibly go wrong? We are responsible, level headed adults, who just so happened to be sitting around the living room, with a fire crackling in the wood stove. Hunter was snoring at our feet, as we sipped on some Jagermeister and rehashed our past, like it was all brand new shit, the way old drunk people do.
That's when I noticed the clock.
I squinted my eyes to be sure.
"Sven, it's two," I said.
"In the morning?" he says.
So, the three of us traipsed up the stairs. Hunter, the last in line, took his first post outside the bedroom door, while I brushed my teeth. He waits there until I get into bed before circling on the rug next to the bed where he will land with a thud, and remain for the rest of the night to keep us safe from, we aren't sure what, by howling and causing a God awful ruckus, until Sven finally yells, "HUNTER, SHUT UP!"
I noticed that something looked amiss in the reflection of the bathroom mirror.
I whipped around with my toothbrush still in my mouth to see what I thought I'd seen, Sven, sitting on the bed, messing around with a,
r-i-f-l-e.
Okay, here is a fact that you should know.
I didn't know that Sven had a rifle.
"Mblal;jwahhtal;?"
I spit out my toothbrush.
"Is that thing real?"
"Yeah, it's real. It's a 22 pumper."
"From?"
"The closet."
"What closet?"
"That one," he points at the wide open, bi-fold door.
"What the?"
"It's been in there at least ten years."
"Well, put it down!"
He keeps dinking around with the f-i-r-e-a-r-m.
"Sven. Put that thing down. Jeez!"
All I know about guns is, they kill people.
And everybody knows that guns and alcohol don't mix.
At this point I am hysterical on the inside and trying not to piss off the tipsy stranger who is holding a gun in my bedroom. Headlines begin reeling in front of my eyes that had to have been popping out of my skull.
MAN SHOOTS FOOT
MAN SHOOTS WIFE
WIFE SHOOTS MAN
"Sven. Put that thing down."
"Oh, jeez Millie. It's not like it's loaded or anything."
"I don't care. Put IT DOWN."
He completely ignores me.
I am insane with panic.
"SVEN!"
"Millie, relax."
BAM
MAN SHOOTS OUT BEDROOM WINDOW
Well, I was pissed.
Sven was shocked.
And Hunter was quiet. FOR ONCE.
Then I went on a tirade of a ranting, conniption that was louder than Hunter has ever barked. I ended up using all of my allotted swear words for the entire month of March. So I'm already dipping into April's batch, which means that now it is going to be a game of catch up, from here on out.
Here is a little history.
Sven says that I knew about that gun.
If I close my eyes and squeeze them real tight, I can almost pull up a glimpse of him bringing home a rifle instead of a power tool, with his Christmas bonus check, like, fifteen years ago.
He tells me that I even shot it once.
It's possible.
I suppose I could have done that.
But whatever the case, I forgot about it.
And I hadn't seen that rifle in a decade.
"What was it doing in our closet for ten years?" I say.
"I put it there in case we have an intruder," he says.
The next day, my friend Giselle suggested that we just lock our door.
The scary thing is, I do not like to clean closets. I hate to clean closets. I haven't been able to clean out our closets adequately since I quit smoking ten years ago. Without lighting a cigarette so that I can sit back and ponder the situation, I can't even get started.
I wonder what the hell else he's got in there.
And Sven is no help. He was born missing the closet, cleaning, concept.
You know how you switch clothes around depending on the seasons?
Well, I bought some new plastic tubs so that we could store our summer clothes in them and hang our winter things up. Sven spent an entire day cleaning out his closet last fall. That's probably when he spotted the gun under the cobwebs. I came home from work to find all of the clothes that he was clearing out of there, on top of the bed, not in the tub. I showed him how you put the folded clothes inside the tubs and you close them.
He was amazed.
The next day I went to put a clean t-shirt in his top dresser drawer only to find that it was completely empty, except for one loose golf ball, that was rolling around in there.
That was October. It is March. That drawer is still solely being used for that golf ball.
He just doesn't get it.
I open that drawer when I am having a bad day, because that right there, is the definition of LOL.
And they say that laughter is good for you.
I suppose with the nice weather that we are now experiencing, he will soon empty out a tub of t-shirts and stuff them back in that drawer, next to that lonely golf ball, until next fall.
So, I'm not sure what is more scary, Sven and that gun, or just us.
"Didn't you ever notice the box of bullets sitting up there on the shelf?" he says as we finally start to settle down under the covers, at three o'clock in the morning.
"That box, right there?"
"Yeah."
"I always figured that was a box of golf balls," I said.
"Golf balls?"
Finally we were drifting off to sleep.
And then Sven breaks the silence.
"Well, at least something exciting happened around here."
I don't know why, but we started to laugh. And then we laughed and we laughed, until our stomachs hurt.
I guess that's what people do after they shoot out the window. I don't know. It was our first one.
The next morning I very carefully opened my eyes,
hoping that maybe it wasn't true.
But it was.
"Good Curling."
