This weekend my self esteem suffers because I realize that if a zombie apocalypse were to set in, I will not be among the survivors.

Even after seeing Zombieland, I’d still believed I’d be adequately prepared. After all, the apocalypse is something I enjoy thinking and writing about, and I’ve read enough books on various instances of the end of the world to have a good sense of what to do.

The first instance, however, that has now disproven my theory that I would survive occurs on Saturday. The cousin and I met up and prepared for the apocalypse by watching Zombieland, and then drove up to Cartersville together with the ex-roommate. I’d like to say that this ride is especially awkward considering I had my cousin sit in the bitch seat–the middle seat–in the other roommate’s truck. I carry two boxes of ammo in my lap while reading Dracula, while Cousin jostles the rifle around, trying to balance it so he can read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, while the other roommate drives. I have never felt more like a redneck in my life.

We drive way out into the country. With the windows down, the wind blows the acrid smell of cow crap into the car. Ahh, the country. Pulling into the dirt driveway of a small little rancher, we see horses and a brown little pond. We meet all the residents of this house, and the one gets out his hand guns and pulls the other truck up the hill so we can shoot from it. The targets are pieces of notebook paper and old pizza boxes with crooked circles drawn on them and stapled up to a wooden shipping pallet. There is a small lesson on gun safety and then the first person steps up.

My cousin shoots off the 9mm before I do. It looks easy, although it is much, much louder than you’d think. Absurdly loud, in fact.  When it is my turn, I walk, shaking, to the spot where we’d picked to shoot from and wait through another mini lesson. You’d think with all the movies I’ve seen that include weapons that at some point I’d have learned how to load and shoot one. And I do, in theory. When it comes to practicing that theory, I find myself staring at the handgun without a clue what to do.

I hit the target a few times, but when I finish, it takes about ten minutes to stop shaking. It is the adrenaline, I guess. And I have no desire to shoot the rifle. All in all, as we drive away back south towards Acworth, I realize that firearms and I do not mix. Strike one against surviving the zombie apocalypse.

Sunday gets worse, even after I put on my ass-kicking shoes. They are sensible boots–not entirely flat (which can throw off your arches more than a slight heel can), but with a normal stacked heel. I can run and jump and climb and do mostly everything in them.

But fail number two was going zombie hunting with those boots and… a khaki skirt. I have yet to purchase pants that will fit down into the boots without bunching up around the tops of them. But how can you run for your life in a skirt? Furthermore, in a skirt that can get so dirty? You just can’t.

Incident three is obvious; we head to a cemetery to look for the undead.

I further prove my ineptitude as we walk around the cemetery and I end up tripping several times on the uneven paths. So much for an agile getaway if I am grabbed by an undead hand.

And lastly, as the horde of shambling undead invade, I let one get me.

For shame.

I spend the rest of our time brooding in silence about my imminent death, wondering how the transformation will take place and who I should say goodbye to first, depressed that out of all the people I had gone with and had known, I’m probably have read more literature and seen more zombie movies than them and would be the first to go. I can’t wield weapons, stay on my own two feet, and make terrible decisions about where to spend my time.

Well, I suppose all I can do now is hope to be one of the few that boards up the house and waits for the end. No travel, no groups of people.

Just me, alone with my inability to fire a gun.