I remembered what I wanted to write about

There is an old high-school friend of mine on facebook who really ticked me off last week. We actually dated for a bit, six or eight weeks as I recall, my senior year. She was two years behind me, so there’s a small age difference but not a big one. She spent all her life until college in the town we went to high school in, whereas I only spent my teenage years there.

This is what annoyed me: she was updating her status that she was headed back to school from fall break and there were four guys in front of her at the check-in counter at the airport. They were on a hunting trip to the Dakotas, and were therefore checking firearms, which I suppose is a longer process than socks and underwear even though no one with half a brain is going to pack one away loaded and ready to go off the first time the case gets dropped. So anyway, she went on for as long as facebook would let her, and then continued in comments on her own post, about how long it was taking and did the guys need to be wearing their camo and blaze orange gear already and generally apologizing to all her school friends about being from the same town as these guys and the "not everyone in my hometown is like this."

Ok, so let’s break this down a piece at a time:

1. Checking firearms is a bit tedious, I understand that, but if she was running late for her flight it is not the fault of these four who probably allowed extra time for themselves since they planned on checking firearms. Also, for a flight to the Dakotas from where they were at least one plane change is likely, so they and the ticket agent probably wanted to take extra care and make sure the rifles went to the same place they did and at the same time.
2. The fact that they were going from Florida to the Dakotas means a couple of things, first they probably aren’t hunting whitetail deer since those are all over the southeast, second it’s an expensive proposition to get out of state tags and hire a guide and get accommodations. This was probably a special, once in a decade or longer, trip for these guys. Not to mention there is no guarantee you will bag anything when you get there, and they are probably going to want to mount whatever they shoot. This involves taxidermy charges and shipping of the finished product they had to save money for.
3. The fact that they were already wearing the hunting gear tells me they probably crammed all their normal clothes into their carry-ons so they didn’t have to pay for extra baggage beyond the rifles. Hunting in the Dakotas this time of year can be a bit chilly and their hunting gear was probably too bulky to cram into a small carry-on bag.

This woman is smart. She’s more than smart, she’s scary smart. She spent more on high school science fair projects than most of us spent on our cars. She has three degrees in engineering and after a life-shifting family related event she is now a divinity student with graduation in 2012 and ordination expected sometime in 2013 if all goes well.

So I have to wonder about the condescending tone of the post, and if she was that embarrassed by the activities of four total strangers why post about it at all?