Volunteer Explorer

I read the local paper every day and can count on finding at least one incidence of gun violence in each issue. Usually there are multiple shootings in my city and the surrounding communities. I didn’t grow up with guns as part of my everyday experience. We weren’t hunters or target shooters. There were two antique rifles hanging on the wall in my parents’ bedroom, but they seemed more like décor than instruments of death. Guns lived in my imagination as things of power and terror. I saw them wielded by cops and criminals in movies and TV shows. I never saw them in real life, on the streets of the mostly white suburb I grew up in. School shootings were not the common occurrence then that they have become. Even when I lived alone in an unsavory neighborhood of Akron and went to gigs as a singing telegram character (read: stripper), I never felt the need of a gun for the euphemism of protection. I always thought of condoms as a much more immediate source of protection than a firear...

It went south so quickly. One day it was a little bit of brackish discharge from my cat's right eye, then two days later it was a scene from a horror show. Less than 48 hours after the vet said I should shop around for a lower surgery fee, the animal ER performed an enucleation — surgical removal of the eye on which an ulcer had erupted. It seemed that in the blink of an eye, my robust, healthy cat had become an invalid. When Abraham’s remaining eye started to turn milky like the right one had, I stopped the steroid drops and called the vet. We switched to antibiotic drops 3 times a day, plus the oral antibiotics left over from the surgery. Three times every day, I searched out his hiding place, lifted him gently, wrapped him in a towel and squirted meds down his throat and into his remaining eye. He whined and cried pitifully. I cried after each episode while placating him with treats. Remarkably, I hardly drank any alcohol during this period. I felt I needed to stay sharp...