…”Perhaps this will refresh your memory.” The District Attorney suddenly thrust a heavy automatic at the quiet figure on the witness stand. “Have you ever seen this before?” Walter Mitty took the gun and examined it expertly. “This is my Webley-Vickers 50.80,” he said calmly. An excited buzz ran around the courtroom. The Judge rapped for order. “You are a crack shot with any sort of firearms, I believe?” said the District Attorney, insinuatingly. “Objection!” shouted Mitty’s attorney. “We have shown that the defendant could not have fired the shot. We have shown that he wore his right arm in a sling on the night of the fourteenth of July.” Walter Mitty raised his hand briefly and the bickering attorneys were stilled. “With any known make of gun,” he said evenly, “I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst at three hundred feet with my left hand.”
—James Thurber, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”
Back when I was a teenager in the suburbs of Houston and dinosaurs roamed the earth, I would practice “practical shooting” in my back yard. I’d spend a hour a day, two or three days a week, practicing drawing from a holster and trying to hit shotgun shells from 25 feet away. These were the glory days of the Second Chance matches
I hadn’t met Karl yet, so my ambition was to be as fast as Jeff Cooper. Or as fast as this guy:
(The curly haired guy with the shotgun is Jim Zubiena, actor and IPSC shooter. That’s not visual trickery; the fast draw is for real. And, yes, I was out of high school by the time Miami Vice came on the air. What of it?)
Anyway, stuff happens. I didn’t get my first pistol until November 7, 2000. (I remember that date for a reason.) And I didn’t shoot a formal sanctioned match until this past Saturday.