A FAREWELL TO REASON

The Kansas Legislature legalized concealed weapons yesterday.
As I was gleefully pondering what kind of gun (and matching thigh holster) I would purchase, a co-worker, Miguel Escudo, treated me to a story.

Miguel is a gentleman farmer, a native Kansan and man of the world. He knows how to milk a goat, how to roof a house, how to mix a cocktail and how to tell a story. He lives his life. He is exactly whom I'd want to be if I were a man of a certain age.

And he is the soul of this workplace. Someone told me that he had spent time in a Spanish prison, for reasons he won't divulge. He smokes Spanish cigarettes. He likes them because they "feel like someone's stepping on your chest." His beautiful wife is Spanish. He described her to me once as "a Spanish Socialist" and "an amazing cook." She looks half her age. He takes her ballroom dancing and buys her Chanel No. 5 and mock-complains that she's too opinionated, that he's always in the dog house for one reason or another. When I see them downtown they're holding hands like they've been married for three weeks, not 30 years. Sometimes something reminds him of a girl he once knew, when he was in the Navy or in college or in Europe or working a dead-end job somewhere in central Kansas. He laughs like he means it. And he doesn't dwell; tomorrow's a new day.

This is the story he told: Decades ago he and his wife were living in "a Wichita ghetto." He bought her "a little pistol" so she'd feel safer when he wasn't around. One day he was sitting at home watching some thugs out the window throw something into the neighboring lot — something that was on fire. So he ran outside to prevent what he thought might be an arson. But when he gets to the site he sees that it's just some punks lighting bags of cement on fire and throwing them down into the rain-soaked foundation "to see what would happen." They scatter when they see him. But all of the sudden, shots ring out! "Those little bastards are SHOOTING at me," he thinks and takes cover. After a moment he crawls back toward his house, and when he has the nerve to raise his head up a little, he sees his beautiful, opinionated, Spanish wife standing on the porch waving that little pistol above her head. When he asks what the hell she's doing, she explains that she saw him "go running out" and so naturally had to arm herself and watch his back. It turns out that in the frenzy to protect her Miguel she fired a few bullets INSIDE the house: one through the ceiling, one through a bookcase, one somewhere else. Miguel thinks of their 6-year-old daughter — and of his propensity to anger his wife, and of her bad aim — and decides the little pistol may contribute more harm than good to their happy little household. He puts it away.

Too bad he's only a gentleman farmer and not a gentleman lawmaker.