Stick 'Em Up!

Took a gentleman caller (GC) to a friend's graduation party.  It's your typical family cook out: food, music, and grilling. There were a few little ones running about as little ones are want to do. One little boy had an orange, toy squirt gun.

The music hummed in the background as the conversation of partygoers drowned whatever work and life worries that may have been a soft murmur left over from the previous workday.  It was shaping up to be a good time, I hope, for all.

At one point while engaged in conversation with the host and her family, I -for the most part- had lost track of the GC. He wasn't not far, maybe within arms reach, but out of the corner of my eye I could see he was definitely acting funny.  As I understood, this was his first time at a celebration of this sort, a graduation party, but I couldn't chalk his odd behavior up to this detail...

While standing in place, he would sporadically lean back, throw his hands up in the air shoulder height with a surprised and worried look on his face.  At 6+ feet with a broad shoulders and an handsome mug to boot, he very much stood out of the present crowd of general suburbanites.  He did that move once, then twice, finally upon the third time I had to inquire about the peculiar distraction (solely out of curiosity, not at all out of embarrassment. If you 've been reading along, you all know I have no right to be embarrassed by others considering how much I dish out).

Like a child about to be wrongfully scolded, he defended his actions by pointing to the small boy with the orange squirt gun and protests, "He was sticking me up," to which, on cue, the little boy sure enough aims and almost fires if it weren't for the attentive parent on whose lap the youngin' was positioned. I chuckle and shake my head to adorable scene between two people in two very different stages of life. I joke that he should not let someone 20 years younger and 200lbs lighter push him around and continued my present conversation.  He graciously handles being the butt of a joke in a yard full of complete strangers, my self included for that time being.

Some time passes, seats around the outside table open up, and GC and I take advantage of the chance to sit under the canopy shade. GC grabs the attention of a curiously friendly aunt, leaving me open...vulnerable...unaware that I had been watched the entire time...

For I have unexpectedly entered the cross-hairs of the pint-sized, gun-toting vagrant from earlier.  I gasp, knowing it's too late, he's locked eyes on his target and all I can do is hope he aims away from my freshly flat-ironed hair.  I throw my hands up, trapped between other party goers. No way out. This is it. When just as he takes aim for the top of hair and begins to pull the trigger, the ever-still attentive parent swats the toy off target allowing the water to splash on a nearby cooler. There is no description for the feeling of relief I relish in that moment, only to have it cut short by a very well deserved, yet polite, "See?" by a smiling, and absolutely correct GC.