Stalking Breda

I have the honor of friendship with a gunny in  what we generally refer to as the Greater Mesa Area,  which includes Phoenix.  Upon my application, he has granted permission to relay in this  forum his adventures among the convened clingers:

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I played hooky yesterday with my boss's permission to go to the toy show.  I soon found myself on the electric danger train downtown with every retired greyhair in the GMA.  "Great," I though, "I'm on the Geezerville Express."  To my complete lack of surprise we all got off at 3rd and Jefferson.  The herd shuffled rather than thundered to the convention center and the beginning of festivities.  (Well, truth be told, the true Inner Circle was feted the night before, but my invitation must have gotten lost in the mail.)   Things were kicked off by hundreds of us milling about in the lobby to no apparent aim or movement.  The logjam broke briefly enough for some of us to de-escalate one landing down, where the cause presented itself: The fire marshall thought there were too many people trying to get in, so rather than, oh, let us IN and spread out, chose instead  to pack thousands of us into every-shrinking holding pens.  My inability to discern the reason for this no doubt explains my failure to obtain greatness in life.   Eventually Common Sense and momentum overcame bureaucratic inertia and my portion of the herd was permitted to enter, descending into what appeared to be unbridled chaos.  It later appeared that there WAS signage, there WERE orderly lines, there WERE uniformed cheerful volunteerd, but all were overwhelmed by tsunamis of humanity.   The line I eventually found myself in didn't so much move as glaciated.  I suspected women were giving birth in it at a greater rate than the standees were being processed but I eventually found myself at the front, where I was registered in approximately three nanoseconds, whereupon I was duly tagged and released into the wild, my endowment ribbon flapping the refrigerated breeze, and hastened to the exhibit hall.   Oh.  My.  Gawd.  Martha, back up the truck.  Acres and acres of machines that turn money into noise, and all of it free for the fondling.  It you tarried to long in your admiration of some bauble the factory representative behind the counter not only encouraged hands-on fondling but nigh-onto insisted upon it lest his corporate feeling be hurt.  Well, okay, if you insist.  Lather rinse repeat for hours upon hours, to the point of sensory overload and muscle fatigue.  And that's just the new stuff.  The historical exhibits were hands-off, naturally, but were astounding all the same.  Smith & Wesson pre-war semi-autos.  Walls of Winchester model 52 variations.  One was devoted solely to Luger carbines.  I longed for a mirror to see if my Hickitude was showing.   Later in the afternoon I began to weary, not so much from the sheer magnitude of it all but from my thwarted quest to merely say "Howdy" to the one-legged Cleveland librarian blogger who managed to get her prothesis aboard an airliner despite the best efforts of PSA.  Also, my feet hurt.  Hey, my badge is good all weekend, right?  I'll try again tomorrow. (To be continued)