PSA

I'm interrupting my previously scheduled blog post (about my further adventures in Salinas) to bring you a public service announcement. It's the same one I've made before... but bear with me.

About an hour south of Salinas is a small community known as King. In it, just off Highway 101, is a fairly large truck stop, and in the middle of the truck stop is a fairly small eatery called the Wild Horse Cafe. (Thus the rearing horse in the photo above.) This was where I stopped for breakfast at 8:00 this morning. You know when you walk in the door of a cafe of this type that if you see plenty of battered trucks outside and plenty of dusty boots dragged up to the counter inside, you're going to get some mighty fine breakfast (which I did, quickly and with salsa on the side).

You also know, in a place like this, you're probably going to see signs like this:

This picture says it all: "God, Guns & Guts Made America Free/Let's Keep It That Way" over a background of our flag, a bald eagle and a man toting a long-barreled gun.

I had already become aware of the shooting in Dayton when I checked my phone at 5:30a.m. for news. Since my son now lives in Dayton, Ohio, you can imagine what reading that news did to my heart rate, which only slowed down a little after he immediately responded to my text message to say he was okay. He followed that with, "Yeah, it's crazy; I've been to that bar before." That's when the tears came. No, it wasn't my son this time. But it could've been. And certainly, it was somebody else's son, somebody else's daughter.

By the time I sat down to coffee, scrambled eggs and home fries, I was determined to take as many deep breaths as might be necessary to get through my breakfast without crying in a small diner surrounded by strangers. Then the gentleman sitting in the booth behind me suddenly jumped up and shouted, "There's been another mass shooting! This one's in Dayton!" He held his cell phone aloft and looked around for a response, whereupon the gentleman sitting one booth away replied loudly, "And they wanna take our guns away? Not mine they don't."

Sigh. 

Not satisfied with that response, the phone wielding gentleman then approached three weathered crop beaters sitting at the counter and showed them the news. One of them glanced at the phone, then leaned into the anxious man's side and began to tell him quietly that he could not trust at all what he saw on the news. "A lot of times they just make that stuff up," he said emphatically.

I wish, oh how I wish, that I were making this up, that this were a fictional story that just came to me while I sat in that isolated diner losing my appetite.

Nope, not a chance. It happened just like that, folks. The first man finally sat down and continued to stare at his phone, occasionally blurting out further details as he continued reading about the carnage.

And I sat. I remained anchored. Time ticked by. What I wanted to say was, "No one wants to take your guns, sir, unless you have an AK-style weapon that you're planning on using to kill people who don't look or think like you." But I didn't. Like our lawmakers, I simply sat and did nothing.

So, since we're still not going to change anything in America in regard to guns, here's my advice:

From now on, whenever you travel to a public place, whether it's a mall or a school or a nightclub or an outdoor concert or a museum, always check for exits when you arrive, as I did this weekend at the Steinbeck Festival. I found the back door of the center easily, saw that it led to an enclosed patio, and determined that, with some effort, I could go up and over the wall if need be.

If you have young children, explain to them that if someone begins shooting, they are not to wait for you, they must run as fast as they can as far as they can away from the gunshots and not stop to look at anything or anyone. You can always be reunited with them later if you manage to survive. If you don't survive, well, the sooner they adjust to someone else looking after them, the better, I suppose.

If you're still of the belief that a man with a gun can be stopped by another man with a gun, please keep in mind that yesterday's shooting occurred in Texas, an "open carry" state. The perpetrator opened fire on women and children and old people. Where were the men with guns to stop him?

Speaking of that, decide in advance if you would really risk your life to save someone or you're just going to run. You'll lose critical seconds being indecisive. I will not forget the interview with the woman in El Paso who said, 'I was trying to help a very elderly woman, but she just couldn't move fast enough, so I left her behind, because the shooter was getting closer.'

I honestly had to ask myself how I would feel if my daughter sacrificed her life to save an old woman, which, believe me, I'm pretty sure she'd do, because she has this thing for old people, and she's pretty badass and stubborn--if she didn't take out the shooter with her teacher voice--"Put that [expletive] gun down right now!"--she'd find a way to help the old woman. But at what price? If the old woman survived, her family would have her for a few more years. If my daughter were killed, she'd be lost to her husband, her children, her eventual grandchildren, and a mother who would never know joy again.

But these are the moral dilemmas we must sort through in advance. Because when the bullets start flying again--and we all know it's only a matter of time before the next mass shooting occurs, maybe in your town, maybe in mine--we will not have time to consider escape routes or reflect upon who is needed more in this life. We will have a handful of seconds to react. We'd best be ready.