Prolonged period in the pokey

I wish Dad had caught me swiping his pistol; he didn’t. It was a beauty, a Military High-Standard .22 caliber. All I wanted to do was “borrow” it so that I could enjoy slaughtering rats with a bunch of other gun-loving students at the garbage dump located several miles from the small town that was home to the university we attended.

We’d meet late in the day, about the time the rats began their nightly forays among the putrefying flotsam, and hide behind a clump of bushes within pistol range of our victims, the population of which could only be described as swarming hordes.

We took...