When you clean other people's houses, you have to be prepared to run into the unexpected. I'm pretty unflapable - for a winged creature. Let's say I found a bong in somebody's bedroom, or their porno stash, or whatever: my main question would be, "Do you want me to dust this?" My default position is that what people do in the privacy of their own home is their own business.

However, today I encountered something sort of on the line. I was cleaning at the R's house. This is the first time that Mrs. R. asked me to vaccuum the living room before she went out to work as usual. One of the dogs was really shedding a lot and so she asked me to pay special attention to the corners, etc.

So, I'm going along with the vac and running it under the sofa....

CLUNK. CLUNK. Hmm, okay, it's hitting something under there. Wonder what that is? And it's a good thing I got down on my hands and knees to look, instead of just clearing it with my hands....

because there were 2 shotguns under there!

Now, it's true that everything I know about guns you could pretty much write on the palm of your hand and have room left over. But I'm not a total boob, and I did grow up out here in the County. When I was young more people here hunted than didn't, and almost all of my friends had guns in their homes. This is how I know it was a shotgun. And also how I know that under the sofa is a sort of unusual place to store a gun. But, it makes sense in the context of the man who owns the house, where the house is, and where the sofa is.

Mr. R is one of my Seriously Right Wing clients. He's not a happy man, in spite of his truly lovely home and wife who cares about him very much. I don't know why. Who can know another person's heart? Maybe he has some secret sorrow, eating away at him. But when I ask him how he is he says "Tired", when I say "good morning" he glares, when I say, "nice day" he gives me a suspicious look. Still, I always try to talk to him. I think it's important to have a civil relationship with anyone whose underwear you have handled, no matter how innocently the circumstance. Often, he talks about the evils of taxation. He doesn't believe in paying income tax. I told him that some members of my church feel the same way, and some have gone to jail over it, which is true. He looked at me with more respect after that, and didn't glare at me as much.

The house is way the hell out in the country, where there is no cell service. The response time of a police officer to any trouble out there would be, well, awhile. You have to know where the place is to get to it...but the man has young adult kids, and they have friends, and they have aquaintences, and they're all in the construction trade, and this is a pretty nice house with some nice things inside.

The sofa faces the front door. The guns pulled out from under the sofa would be the perfect shot at anyone coming in. And certainly the shooter would have the element of surprise.

Now, I've known many County people who were fully prepared to defend their home with a shot gun. For instance, Mr. Woodburner, God rest his soul, was in similar circumstances, way out on a family farm. He kept his shotgun, loaded, by his rocking chair, where he always sat when he was home, by his fireplace, smoking his pipe. Because the gun was loaded, he kept the breech open, so that if somebody hit it with their foot, it minimized the chance of it going off by accident.

The same way these guns were being stored under Mr. R's sofa. I didn't look to see if they were loaded. I didn't touch them. But I'm 90% sure, given the whole situation, that they were.

The thing about Mr. Woodburner was that his shotgun was in plain view. Every child and young person who came into the house was warned not to touch it....and if you had ever met Mr. Woodburner, you'd take any warning he ever gave you VERY seriously. Everybody knew he had it. Everybody knew he'd use it. Even my abusive boyfriend knew it. Mr. Woodburner, like most gentlemen of his age and station in life, did not approve of men who hit women. When his daughter brought me home with her for my safety he told me to stay as long as I liked and to think of his place as my home. He never told me that later that night when Fists called ranting that he was going to come up there to get me, Mr. Woodburner quietly said, "You do that. Me and my shotgun will be waitin' for you." I found that out after he passed away. ( Fists never did show up)

Now, I am of a divided mind about Mr. R. and his shotguns. On one hand I think, well, okay, these guns are in his home kept for its defense for completely understandable reasons. He is 100% within his rights to keep a his gun however and wherever he wants to keep it. It's his business.

On the other hand, I can visualize with perfect clarity one of his kids trying to sneak in past lights out and getting an aweful surprise. Or a visting child pulling it out...because, lets face it, I've been cleaning there for weeks and no one ever said to me, "Mind the guns under the sofa"....in fact, I think it's their concealment, more than the fact of them being there, that makes me uneasy.

I mean, is he expecting to be attacked? If so, wouldn't it be easier to get an alarm system, or a big dog?

I don't know anyone else with a gun who is this irresponsible about storing them. Most people I know keep them in closets, or in gun cabinets, or locked up. I don't know if I ought to say anything. Such as, "Is it okay to yank those guns out from under the couch there, the next time I run the vac?"

Truly, it takes all kinds of people to make up the world.