I wrote this ages back, thought I pressed post but I can’t find it, so here it is again. Sorry if this is a story I’ve already told.

The Shot show is a good place to booth graze; just about everyone has a bowl filled with candy or something, and an astute person with a good pancreas can feed himself or herself handily from the various booths.

Some of the booths have bowls of other things, Glock and Ruger sometimes have nice cloisonne pins, the ladies at Fausti have elegant little keychains, the laser people usually have laser cut samples in big tupperware bowls.

One of the booths close to ours is a manufacturer of mold-to-fit hearing protection, and they have a big bowl of them on their counter; the kits come with a brightly colored moldable plastic which you knead into your ear canal and wait for it to harden, and they make for pretty good hearing protection. They must have hundreds of samples there for you to look at, some people mold their game-ears into them, etc.

I’m standinga cross the aisle looking at some really nice leather goods, and I see a guy come walking through, nice looking guy, nice suit. He walks past the earpro booth, and in one smooth motion, reaches into the bowl, grabs a handful of the molded earplugs, and pops them into his mouth.

Two seconds later he’s bent over, resting his hands on his knees horking up a couple pieces of plastic, while everyone watches in horror. A couple go up as if to assist, he raises his hand to stop them, catches his breath, picks up the offending items off the floor with his handkerchief, and tosses them into a garbage can before resuming his stroll. I really have seen everything now.