‘Sir, Step AWAY From The Hammer!’

The local paper has recently printed a series of letters to the editor about how taking guns away from honest people will leave the populace at the mercy of armed drug addicts and about how hammers kill more people each year than guns do. I wrote the following Letter to the Editor in response. So far it has not been published.

Dear Editor,

The other night my wife and I were watching News for Dumb FOX in bed. (I know that’s hard to believe because all the words in this letter are spelled correctly, but I swear it’s true.)

Suddenly we heard machine guns hammering away at our door. I heard a heavy thud, told my wife to cover her ears and sure enough a satchel charge blew off our front door. We knew it was marauding drug addicts, because Williamsport is so dangerous.

I said to my wife, “Wife,” I said, “where’s my hammer?”

Uncovering her ears she asked, “Ball-peen or claw?”

I knew the gangs of marauding drug addicts in Williamsport are generally small, so I said, “Ball-peen.”

“It’s in the tool box in the basement,” she said.

I knew I had to get past the horde of drug addicts in the foyer to get to the cellar stairs. I didn’t know what they might be armed with besides light machine guns and explosives, but I knew if I could get to my hammer, I could drive them from my castle.

Then I had an idea. I went to the top of the stairs and said in a loud voice, I said, “Wife, where’s my ball-peen.”

I heard a collective gasp from the bottom of the stairs. Even though they were breathing in, I could smell their fetid breath, that’s how bad the breath of Williamsport’s marauding drug addicts is. I could smell their breath even when they were breathing in. I heard a squeaky voice at the bottom of the stairs say, “Did he say ball-peen?!”

Several voices murmured that they thought I had said, “Ball-peen,” which, in fact, I had said. I had said, “Ball-peen.”

The reek of flop sweat flooded the stairwell. My wife, being much smarter than any marauding drug addict in Williamsport, caught my idea. She shouted from the bedroom, “Forget the ball-peen. I have a claw hammer right here.”

Like THUNDER the gang of marauding drug addicts headed for the door. Three-Stooges-like, they got caught temporarily in the door then managed to break away. I heard them rumbling across the front porch, down the steps, across the yard and down the street to whatever vehicles marauding Williamsport drug addicts could muster.

The little lady and I tried to swap high fives, but we’re not drug addicts, so we had to settle for a kiss. I went down stairs. The marauding Williamsport drug addicts were so terrified of the thought of our ball-peen that several had left piles of digested Whoppers, or whatever marauding drug addicts eat, on the rug. They had also dropped seven automatic rifles, four fragmentation grenades, a white phosphorus grenade and two claymore mines.

I will never again doubt my friends in the NRA who tell me that hammers are mightier than guns. In fact, when the sun came up this morning, I paid for a lifetime membership in the National Hammer League, at least that’s what I assume NHL stands for.

by Dan Mason, Central Pennsylvania