I have essentially no idea what I did today. I do know that my day started with a rousing game of Warcraft, oddly enough, that didn’t finish until almost 4pm.

I know, it’s like high school all over again.

I then followed that up with shopping and lunch with the girls. The shopping that was being done was for pepper spray. I deemed pepper spray to be a viable compromise between the guns/tasers that many men in my life are rooting for. By many men I mean my dad, multiple boys my age, and I believe it was my grandfather who got out that really loud taser thing at Christmas.

The tipping point came about a week ago and resulted in my marching straight to those IT boys and making an announcement.

“I need Mace and I need your help.” They stared at me blankly.
“Can we say no?” JJ asked, stealing a glance at his desk mate.
“I don’t really see the point,” I said, slumping into one of the chairs around their conference table.

After we cleared up the confusion over whether or not I was asking them to volunteer for target practice, they said that of course they could help me purchase a bit of pepper spray. They told me about and sent me links for Barbie pink canisters of pepper spray all day long. Ignoring the fact that no one in the world will take me seriously with a Barbie key chain canister of pepper spray, I had to get it in the end because the other options contained tear gas and other neuro-damaging items which I would never wish on anyone.

“I just want something that will give me a head start,” I said. “No killing or disabling, just… making them late for attacking me. Very late, preferably. Late enough that I’ll have peeled out in my car long ago.”

They sent me to Bass Pro Shop. Technically, one said Bass Pro and the other said Cabella’s, but I’ve heard about Cabella’s. Cabella’s, I hear, has this massive taxidermy landscape with things killing other things and other stuff being killed by people. It didn’t seem like my cup, though JJ did offer to go with me.

Neither of these boys bothered to mention that Bass Pro was just as bad.

I went with the girls, we all now have matching pink pepper spray, and upon walking in this is what you heard:
“Where are we?”
“Are you serious?”
“Are these real?”

Bass Pro is just like Cabella’s, I imagine.

So we wandered around the posed-for-pouncing taxidermy, looking for pepper spray and being leered at by every person that we came across. We looked like city girls, because we’re city girls. I don’t know what we were expecting, really.

However, I dare you to come up with an outdoor sport that would require Mace. We started in the gun area, but decided right off that we were really too scared to go in there. Next was to the boating area where there wasn’t a pepper in sight.

Guns and boats. Very city of us to expect pepper spray near guns (alternate protection method) and boats (drug dealing hideouts in need of protection…?).

We also tried the fishing area, archery area, the grill area, and the food area before we tried to get someone to help us. We stood in various lines while the Really friendly staff ignored us and after about ten minutes of that I said we should go check by the registers.

While we tried to find the registers (you have to understand how overwhelming this experience was, we could barely see what we were looking at half the time) I called JJ and asked where it was. He fussed over why I didn’t just let him get some for me at Cabella’s since he was working in that area anyway and then agreed to call his deskmate and ask where it might be.

Three feet from the register we got a call saying that it was on the bottom level, near the front, by the elevators.

It was located in the camping “Freeze Dried Food” section. It was also located at the register as I suspected, but that’s neither here nor there.

As we were leaving, this is what you heard:
“If you ever ask me to go there again, the answer is no.”
“If I ever ask you to go there again, tell me I should not go either.”
“Did you see that there were live ducks in there?”