In my city, there’s a guy who owns a local gun store chain. (Or maybe owned—I dunno, he was old in the 90s, he’s probably not around anymore.) He’s locally infamous for his crazy white hair and his creepy chuckle on TV commercials where he says “I don’t wanna make any money, I just love to sell guns. Heh heh heh.”

Anyway, one day I was driving home and I saw him in the flesh. He was driving a pretty expensive convertible, with his distinctive white hair and a vanity plate with his name on it. I pulled up beside him at a stop light, and he looked like the saddest, most depressed person I’ve ever seen. Not in a personal tragedy way, just in a life sucks way.

It’s tough to feel sorry for him. He’s clearly quite rich, and he made that money selling death machines. But that look of being dead inside, on a face I only ever associated with that creepy chuckle, driving a luxury vehicle, has stuck with me.