Please, give me my bullet

I'm stingy with anger. I try not to waste it. But my wife knows I've reached my limit when I turn to her and simply say, "Give me my bullet."

Despite the fact it's against the law to take someone's life, there are times when it would be convenient if we could just eliminate some of the idiots we run into during the normal course of a year.

Like the guy who's driving drunk, weaving in and out of traffic and endangering everybody else's life. Or the lady who insists on telling everybody in line at the grocery store about her bunion surgery.

Then there's the kid in the car with a sound system that shakes your house when he drives by. The woman who cuts you off in traffic. The person who dialed your number by mistake at 3 in the morning.

You get the picture.

My plan is you get one bullet a year.

Use it wisely.

Buddy system

The beauty of my one-bullet plan is that it's on the buddy system. You don't get to carry your bullet. You have to ask someone for it and have a good reason to use it.

And it's a matter of timing. Suppose a store clerk is rude and completely messes up your bill. It's bothersome, but hardly worth a bullet in January.

Maybe the guy at the car wash forgot to clean your back window. Or you're on the phone, dealing with a customer service representative who doesn't speak English. How about the guy who always speeds through your neighborhood?

Life is full of annoyances, large and small. Like people whose dogs run wild on the beach. But you might not want to use your one and only bullet in the summer when you still have half the year to go.

Because as sure as you use it on an incompetent government bureaucrat in August, you'll run into an arrogant assistant vice president in October that deserves it even more.

A peacemaker

There is, however, a built-in deterrent in the one-bullet plan. It can backfire on you because other people also get a bullet.

This means you have to be careful that you're not the chosen target of someone who decides you're the one who needs killing.

Chances are that sometime during the year you might do something that would cause someone else great displeasure. It could be in the normal activities of your job, or maybe you just had a bad day.

Either way, you have to be careful somebody doesn't use his bullet on you.

In the long run, however, the one-bullet plan could turn out to be a peacemaker. If everybody thinks long and hard about using his or her bullet, we might just put it off until New Year's Eve and totally forget about it during the celebration.

Personally, I think the one-bullet plan just might work. Because it's not guns that kill people, it's ammunition.

Reach Ken Burger at kburger@postandcourier.com or 937-5598. To read previous columns, go here.