Yesterday JJ went on this run (a chick has agreed to have a few beers with him so he decided to tighten up his flab as much as possible before the date.) So he goes on this run, he's choosing new routes, this one is a little more hilly and therefore he's probably burning up more fat, hooray.

It was stormy here yesterday and the wind was blowing all hard and there were branches all over his route. He had gotten high before he left his apartment (it helps you forget that you are running and it doesnt seem so hard of a task.) He made a game of timing his steps to land on the branches and twigs scattered all over just to get that satisfaction of hearing and feeling that "snap" under his foot. He got to the this park at the end of his route and decided to go walk through, sit down and rest before turning around and running back. As he was climbing a hill at this park he noticed there were even more branches down here on account of the more trees and he realized that this is a kid's dream stick-gun shop. There were branches everywhere and it couldnt take a kid long to find those sticks that have the perfect break and look like guns.

When JJ was a kid he'd pack up a giant artillery. Of course he had a couple plastic toy guns but a lot of the arsenal was made up of stick guns. He remembered putting two in each sock, a couple in a tattered old back pack, two stuck in his waist and then carrying a branch just as tall as he was that he could barely even lift. He was fucking ready for WWIII. The town where he lived was redoing their power lines so JJ and his friends had these deep, long trenches to fight each other in.

The simple rules of war back then were as follows:

1. You have to be honest if you got shot, if someone claims they got you, they most likely are correct and you have to fall down and count to 25 before you could become a new guy and get up to help fight the warfront.

It was a magical time. if you weren't playing guns and saving the day with your buddies you were playing guns by yourself, you were the commando sent in to save the president's daughter who you just knew was going to fall in love with you.

Back at the park, JJ decided he was going to find the coolest stick-gun and bring it back home. But once he started looking, he noticed that none of the branches and sticks had the look or shape of a gun. Sure, there were a few that he could have redesigned and formed a stick-gun, but he wanted the ones offered straight up by nature. And he couldnt find one. His past experience told him that it should have only taken a few minutes to find a stick-gun. But there really werent any around.

JJ promised himself he wouldn't go home without a stick-gun.

He searched that fucking park for a good twenty minutes and found nothing. No pistols, no rifles, no big cannons. Nothing.

Then he walked down the other side of the hill and saw this little garden fountain area near the park with a few more trees. He decided to search there. Nothing. It was really pissing him off. And that's when he saw the fucking sign for the park.

"Lyndale Park Peace Garden"

Fucking hippies. JJ blames this all on them. Their anti-gun lobby has wormed its way into mother nature via the vast left wing conspiracy of global warming. JJ's inability to find a stick-gun is all because of hippies and their global warmings.

This really pissed him off so he just turned around in front of the peace garden sign and ran back home. He still had his vow to pick up any stick-gun he saw. But there was nothing, and as he brooded over how much he hates hippies, he was distracted by a couple of kids playing out in their front yard. A ten year old girl, an eight year old girl and a three year old boy just chasing each other around their small front yard. Their dad was sitting on the steps watching them.

And that's when he saw it.

On the yard a few feet away from the dad is a perfectly shaped stick gun. JJ broke his vow, he didn't run over to the stick, snatch it up, and take it home. He just kept going.