Gun Person

We are ten in the room, my colleagues and I, and the volunteer asks us if we’ve ever been to a gun range. The only hand in the air is mine; I want to lower it immediately, but I’m put on the spot. The volunteer says, “Great,” in a tone that I know — having used it in my own teaching — singles me out as the star pupil.

“Now, after they give you your gun, all your nice new ammo, what do they give you?”

“Uh, they give you hearing protection,” I answer, because I am the only one who can.

I’m afraid my colleagues are taking mental notes, replacing He teaches English and is a vegetarian with He teaches English and has been to a gun range as my index-card biography. I wish the mortuary science professor were here. He runs a skeet-shooting club and believes the Rothschilds rule the world.

“That’s right. Guns are loud, and people don’t expect that. When someone comes shooting into the room, it’s loud. The smell of gunpowder is everywhere, and it can overload your senses.”

I sink a little more into my chair. The active-shooter training has been going on for about twenty minutes, and now I’m the resident subject matter expert. The volunteer has been asking these leading questions for more than an hour. He has specific answers already laid out in his head; I understand this. This is often how I teach, with questions whose answers are sometimes so obscure that I know no one will guess them. Listening to the volunteer, though, I find this method of teaching annoying. Now I have a whole career to revise.

As the volunteer moves on to why most people freeze, rather than fight, in response to an active shooter, I want to explain myself. Specifically, I want to turn around and tell the very pregnant woman behind me, the dual enrollment director who just introduced some savvy high school students to my summer English class, that I’m