I see Patty's mouth moving, but the roar of her Humvee obliterates the sound of her voice. I'm no good at lip reading so I'm straining to snatch a piece of her ongoing chatter.

"It's even got a GPS, you know. Civilians call 'em Humvees." Patty shouts. "Not me, Babycakes. I call my sweet ride a Hummer."

Her "ride" is doing something, but I won't go so far as to say it's humming.

Incredibly, Patty shelled out over sixty-five thousand big ones for this ugly piece of pink metal. Pink. She ordered it special. She could have bought a Jag for the same money, fully equipped with real leather seats, power everything, CD, DVD player AND a GPS.

Shifting gears as though doing her thang at Daytona, she passes a pokey little Corvette at such close range that I can see my reflection in the driver's Raybans. My heart drops down somewhere near my kneecaps and I think it may choose to stay put.

"For heaven's sake, Patty. Slow down," I shout at my five-foot tall, daredevil friend behind the wheel. She is perched on a child's booster stool, the only thing that allows her to see over the dash without standing up.

She takes her eyes off the road long enough to throw me a look and my heart does the kneecap thing again.

"Keep your eyes on the freaking road, Patty and slow down!"

"I drive fast because I am seated behind the wheel of a HUMMER." Without even a glance in the rearview mirror, she charges past a Mobil Oil truck the size of a 747, which makes my liver do a shag step before it joins my heart down around my knees.

Patty was sixty-something years old on her last birthday. Looking at her, she is the picture of a sweet little old lady, somebody's very short grandmother. She dresses in size three, wrinkle-free pants and extra-small tee shirts with tiny, embroidered flowers on the front. Having discovered Reeboks trimmed in pink as soon as her aging feet began to grow odd-shaped bumps and knots, she has never since been tempted by Nike Airs or Nike anything else. Patty maintains a modicum of style only in the sense that her polyester pantsuits always match her Reeboks.

Her once flaming red hair faded to white long ago, but she and Miss Clairol put their heads together and came up with a pale pink tint, leaving two inches of white streaking down the middle of her head. Think pink skunk.

We swerve into Peaches Service Center in order for the Hummer to guzzle enough gasoline to fuel a fleet of Fords for a year, and I am finally comfortable enough to release the breath I have been holding in.

"Hey, Babycakes, catch that windshield for me while I pump." Her voice booms official enough to make me jump out and nearly break my leg. It takes about ten seconds for me to realize that I would need an extension ladder to "catch" that windshield. In fact, I'll have to stand on a nearby trashcan just to haul my butt back into the car/tank.

I give up quickly and crawl back inside the Hummer. As I reach for my seat belt, my fingers wrap around a cylinder of cold metal instead of the expected safety harness. Puzzled, I turn to see what it is, and that's when I nearly fall out of the car/tank again. Jerking my hand away, I scream. "Patty! You've got a weapon of mass destruction in this tank!"

My mind is racing faster than Patty's manic drive down the causeway. I have never actually laid eyes on an AK-47, but I'm pretty sure my well-manicured fingers have just been up close and personal with my first one. I can't think of any good reason for the sweet little lady from Ludiwici to be flitting around South Georgia in a pink military vehicle complete with an assault weapon strapped to the back of the passenger seat.

Patty clunks the gas nozzle down, slides her card through the slot and in less than forty seconds, leaps back into the Hummer as though she is Special Ops with immediate attack orders direct from whoever is Secretary of Defense this week.

She glances over at me. "Your face is as white as a mashed potato." She says this casually while firing up the engine and simultaneously drowning out all sound within a five-mile radius.

I blink once and then casually reach over and snatch the Hummer's key out of the ignition, simultaneously killing the noise and temporarily restoring peace if not globally, at least within the aforementioned five-mile radius.

"We are not moving one inch until you explain to me why there is an assault weapon strapped to the back of my seat."

She looks at me as though I am a slow child. "Oh, fudge. It's not real." She puts a sly grin on her face. "Ha! Fooled you though, didn't it? That baby is guaranteed to fool the enemy, too."

"Enemy? And just what enemy would that be, Patty?"

She rolls her eyes. "Duh! We're fighting a War on Terror. Haven't you heard?"

"Yes, Patty, I heard. But I also heard that it's being fought in the Middle East, not in South Georgia."

"Duh. The War on Terror is everywhere and I, along with Homeland Security, plan to be ready to rock n' roll and kick some butt when we face the enemy."

I close my eyes and a mental image fills my head. Tee-niney Patty is pointing her toy assault weapon at a bearded, turban-doffed terrorist who has a bomb basted to his belly. It is not a pretty picture.

"That's right, Patty. You go ahead and aim a fake AK-47 at a terrorist. Be sure to do it while you're perched on your Billy Barty booster chair behind the wheel of this gawd-awful pink Humvee. You'll kill him for sure, because he'll die laughing after he blows your butt to kingdom come."

She lets out a turbo charged breath then throws the slow child look at me once again. "HumMER. It's called a HumMER. Why can't you get that straight?"

Snatching the keys out of my hand, within seconds she fires up the engine. "I am a patriot and I gotta do what I gotta do, Babycakes. Besides, I can't get a permit for a real AK-47. And they're gonna be real sorry when Chuck Heston gets my letter of complaint."

She shoots out of Peaches and onto Highway 17 while I grit my teeth and hold on to the side of the pink Hummer/Humvee. She may look like a sweet little lady from Ludiwici, but the truth is, Ol' Patty is packing heat, even if it only shows up in the form of a flaming Hot Flash.