Years and years ago I had a pair of sequential serial number .45s, 1911a1s to put a point on it. I bought them for a song and decided to flip them for a very tidy profit. I did this by making a dueling pistol case for them. The case contained the pair of pistols, some cleaning supplies, a pair of magazines and a box of ammunition.
Someone fell in love with both the pistols and the dueling set concept and paid me handsomely for it.
Sometimes I wish I had either not sold it or picked up another pair of matching pistols and made another dueling set out of them.
Between the time I finished making the nice case and the time I sold it I sarcastically challenged someone to a duel after he overloaded his face to me. When I opened the case and showed him the matched 1911s his eyes got pretty wide and he settled right down and started back peddling full of apologies. I was not being stupid. I knew he'd cut and run. Had he actually accepted I would had bluffed until the last minute and I would have backed down unless I could have done something creative. All I did was let him know that some people would hold him to task for his rude behavior.
A while back in Sears someone didn't like my hat and gave me a ration over it. He said it was insulting to Native Americans. I couldn't get him to shut the hell up. He went on and on.
We were in the tool area so I reached for a couple of roofing hatchets and offered to purchase them and meet him outside where we could settle our differences. He didn't know what to say so I added that I was half Irish, half Sioux (The old Elizabeth Warren trick) and maybe beforehand I could stop in the mall bar for a couple of drinks of whisky.
He fled, visions of an alcoholic half Indian, half Irishman wielding a roofing hatchet reeling through his mush brain. My mission was accomplished. I had actually made him think for a change.
Quite a number of years ago my cat tore up a dog and the owner wanted me to pay for the stitches. He thought it was pretty funny when the dog treed the cat but lost his sense of humor when Tokie jumped out of the tree onto the dog's head and proceeded to tear up the pooch's nose.
He ran his mouth and demanded 'satisfaction' which was a VERY poor choice of words. He had inadvertently challenged me to a duel. I told him to bring a witness and meet me Saturday morning.
On Saturday I answered the door with a pair of swords, an Errol Flynn shirt and my moustache trimmed ala Errol. I told him I could probably scrape up a couple of pistols if he preferred.
Panic set in and his 'second' called the police.
After the cop heard my side of the story (this was years ago when we had a department with a sense of humor) the smirking officer suggested we settle this matter in West Virginia. "Those hillbillies eat that kind of stuff up''.
With that I tossed the swords into the back of the pickup, told my adversary to meet me in the first rest area in I-79 below the WV border. My pal and I hopped into the pickup and I started the truck up. I rolled down the window and asked if he wanted me to get a pair of pistols.
Things were not going as he planned. I counter offered by asking the cop if he'd referee a fist fight in my back yard. My adversary caved in then and there before the cop could say anything. The cop had been smirking the entire time. He knew I was trolling him.
A couple of weeks later I went into a restaurant and he was sitting at the bar with a snootful and came over and tried to pick a drunken fight with me and got chucked out. I watched, he got into his car and I instantly called the police, gave them a description of the car and the direction it was headed in and he got popped for a DUI.
A few days after that I met the cop at the local convenience store. My moustache was growing back in and the cop told me that it didn't make me look suave like Errol Flynn. He said it made me look like a dumpy little Italian organ grinder named Giuseppe. Oh, well. We both quietly agreed that rude behavior would not end until people stopped putting up with it.
One thing I have learned and have said here over and over is that people will not change their rude behavior until we as a people stop letting it all slide. When there are consequences for rude behavior it will drop like a stone.
If we start holding people accountable an awful lot of things would change.
They call the era between about 1880 and 1920 the era of good manners. A lot of people think it was a Victorian thing. It wasn't. It was because an awful lot of people carried pocket revolvers and derringers and the cost of running one's mouth could rapidly become very dear.
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A friend of mine reported that he was on an airplane and some guy apparently didn't like his seat assignment and started giving the
Some other guy got up and offered to put the man to sleep for the duration of the flight if he didn't just sit down and shut up.
The jerk sat down and behaved himself for the entire flight and I heard the guy that stood up to him wound up with a couple of free drinks and extra snacks.
What happened there is someone simply decided not to tolerate rude behavior. Most people will back down pretty easily.
To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY
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