Gun Control

The last time that I shot at an animal was also the only time.  I was either five or six years old, I can't remember which, but it had to be somewhere in those years because I remember the house where it happened.  It was a crummy little rent house on Bennett Street in Stillwater, OK.  The lessees of the house were my father, his best friend, and his girlfriend at the time who would eventually become my stepmother.  I had been left alone to shoot empty Coors beer cans in the backyard with the BB gun that my father had bought for me on an occasion for which I am not certain.  For most boys growing up in Oklahoma, the procurement of their first gun is a monumental event, but I can't recall ever even asking for one, though I may have, it is hard to say.

My father, being recently divorced from my mother had been going through a number of identity crises, and recently had settled on outdoorsman.  It was a good enough fit, he had grown a mustache and tended to look good in jeans and cowboy boots, plaid shirts, and goose down vests.  He had met someone through his girlfriend who was an actual hunter and probably decided that he should give it a go as well.  His metamorphosis from small-town optometrist to weekend game hunter was somewhat comical and a little sad at times.  Sure he owned a jeep, but to see him hoist a shotgun up to his shoulder and take aim was about as believable as watching a stage actor or a model on a photo shoot attempt the same motion.  It was not without its grace, but there was nothing about it that felt particularly lethal.

My father, the hunter was preceded by my father, the bohemian folksinger and followed by my father, the sailor.  Later incarnations would include the windsurfer, the tennis pro, the angler, the country-clubber, the woodworker, and so on.  Each of these hobbies requiring the purchasing of thousands of dollars worth of "gear" that he would devote the better part of my visiting weekends scouting out.  Sailing was my favorite because I actually got to go sailing which was mostly peaceful and of terrible interest to me.  But right now, he was a hunter.  And being the son of a self-interested father meant that I was, too.

Game hunting required a lot of equipment.  In particular, since no one in our family had ever hunted anything more than a great place to buy home furnishings, my father was starting from scratch.  We had to purchase various guns and ammunition, clothes for hunting when it was cold and clothes for hunting when it was wet.  We bought decoys that looked like mallard ducks and small wooden whistle-like devices that when correctly manipulated, mimicked their calls.  The shopping for these items seemed never ending and in the outdoors store I would wander off to the section with the camping equipment and marvel at the freeze dried food selections, browsing their bags as though I were preparing to order my dinner.  Although I remember spending a lot of time with my father shopping for hunting gear, I only remember going hunting with him once.

We had planned on being up very early in the morning, before sunrise.  Presumably so we could catch the birds unaware before they got their breakfasts and shuffled off to work.  But we overslept.  I remember my father hurrying around our house gathering up all of the necessary instruments that we would need to hunt down and kill... doves, I think it was.  We bundled ourselves in thick, puffy jackets and jumped in the jeep heading towards a ranch that one of my father's friends owned.  When we got there it was nearly 8:00 AM and even though I knew nothing about hunting, I could tell by the expression that my father was wearing that we were too late.  We walked the ranch covering acre after acre not seeing whatever it was we were supposed to be there to kill and I could tell my father was frustrated.  Every once in a while, I would ask him a question and he would remind me that I had to be quiet.

"The birds can scare just by hearing the dry grass under our feet," he explained.  So talking was out of the question.

After what seemed like several hours, we stopped at a little pond to drink some water from our canteens and eat some summer sausage and cheese that we had prepared the night before.  The sun was beating down on me and I could feel sweat rolling down various parts of my body underneath all of my clothes.  We sat quietly and ate, and I wondered if it might be alright to talk but then decided not to risk it.

It was my father who broke the silence.  "I think maybe we should start heading back.  Not many birds out here today."

I nodded my head not knowing if I was allowed to speak.

"Grab your things, let's go," he said, and he picked up his shotgun and I picked up the little pack with the food and threw it over my shoulder.

Just then, I saw my father spring into action and before I could turn around, I heard the explosion that was the discharge of his gun.  I turned to look at what he was shooting and saw a bird falling from the sky.  It was funny, though - like it was not falling the right way.  It was falling slower than I had expected and was much larger as well.

"Is that a dove?" I asked.

"I don't think so," my father said.

A visible tightness drew across his face as we went to see what he had shot.  When we got there we saw a large, brown-feathered bird struggling on the red clay soil.  It had not died yet and I wondered what he might be thinking.  Flying along one minute and struck to the ground, mortally wounded the next.  I started to cry and turned away from the whole scene when I was surprised by the sound of another blast from the shotgun.  I turned toward my father and I must have had a look on my face that demanded an explanation because he immediately told me, "I had to put it out of its misery."

I turned away again and searched the ground for something else to focus on, hoping that I would see something that would take my mind off of the way I felt in that moment.  I felt terrible for the bird and I was terrified to know what plans my father had for it now that it was dead.  I resolved not to look back in the direction of the massacre but soon broke my own promise as curiosity got the best of me.  When I scanned the ground where I had last seen our prey, I noticed only small mound of earth - no blood, no feathers.  My father had buried the bird.  Once again the look on my face must have warranted a response because my father said, "I wasn't supposed to shoot that bird.  It was a golden eagle.  Don't tell anybody that we shot it, I think it might be a federal offense."

I am not sure how much time passed between that day and the day that I stood aiming at a squirrel running the wire in the back yard at my father's rent house.  But even as I took aim and proceeded to squeeze the trigger of my BB gun, I knew what I was doing was wrong.  I may have nicked the squirrel or I may have missed him completely, but I am fairly certain that it was not a fatal shot because he scampered away down the wire and into a neighboring pecan tree fairly quickly and without much effort.  When I looked around to see if anyone had been watching, I saw my father.  The look on his face was one of disappointment and I knew without speaking that I had no good excuse.  He came and took the gun from my hands and I offered no struggle.

"You are only supposed to shoot at the cans," he said and he left me there in the backyard as he escorted the gun to the house.

I picked up a basketball that was lying in the yard and sizing up the hoop through my tears, I began to shoot.  I was crying because I had let my father down, I was crying because I was thinking about the bird, and I was crying because I wanted someone to make sense of it all for me.

I never shot another gun and I am pretty sure that my father hasn't either.  Our attempts at being wildlife hunters was a colossal disaster, at best.  I have never been able to understand how some fathers and sons get such a great bonding experience out of hunting down and killing animals.  But, there are a lot of things I don't understand.

One thing that I learned about my father and myself was the fact that if you give either of us a gun and enough time, we will eventually shoot at something that we shouldn't.

Crazy Kid Stuff

My baby now sits up.  He crawls, eats real food, and tries to stand, as well.  Next week he will be eight months old.  In two-thirds of one year he has managed to learn to do all of these things.  Truth be told, most of it has been learned in the last month or so.  Before then, he was mainly resigned to lying on his back like an upended turtle grasping at various shiny objects and working on his hand-eye skills.

But now he is mobile.  You can tell that these newly developed abilities make him very happy.  He is truly proud of himself as he moves towards top-heavy pieces of furniture and attempts to crush himself with them or as he squeals with glee when he grasps the power cord for the computer and proceeds to ingest it.  You can also tell that he is very much... a boy.

Right now his path of destruction is limited.  Without the ability to walk upright he can only manage to dislodge items that are grounded and somewhat light in weight such as our antique smoke stand or say, a swivel chair.  But you can tell he has his sights set on larger items - he is nothing if not persistent.  This is no real surprise to me.  I was a boy once and I even had the aid of a kid brother.  Together we managed to destroy almost every lamp, decorative wall-hanging, and expensive piece of furniture in our childhood home spanning the better part of two decades.  Play Australian Rules Football in the house?  Sounds like a great idea!  Smash eggs with a badminton racket?  Why not!

As a Father, I can understand these things.  They are not reasonable, but few things that boys enjoy are, really.  When I was a boy, I would spend the better part of an afternoon lying on my back and bouncing a racquetball off of the wall, up to the ceiling, and then back into my waiting hands.  Over and over again.  For hours.  This little exercise produced the most annoying rhythmic "da-dum" sound, which may explain why my mother always found so many errands to run on the weekends.

But as a woman, I am worried that Cari might not have the same shared-past type of lenses in her glasses that allow her to view these inherently stupid boy traits as amusing or even, endearing.  What will be her reaction the first time she turns a corner and sees Grey banging senselessly on the wood floors with the claw end of a hammer?  Might she be pleasantly surprised when she finds out that the reason there is water running down the stairs is because Grey has decided to find out just how many nerf balls he can stuff into the toilet?

Cari has an older brother, so it is not like she hasn't lived with this type of moronic behavior.  But he is 5 years older than her which means that she was not even born when his body of work had begun.  By the time she had enough sense to know that fastening the cat's collar to a plastic shopping bag was an insanely destructive idea, her brother had probably moved on to reading banned books and scheming on pubescent girls.

The other day as Cari and I were enjoying some cold, cold wine (don't ask) on the porch after putting our child to bed, Cari said, in an exasperated tone, "He is just such a...boy."  I didn't need any clarification - I instantly knew what she meant.

She said that she had been talking to our Godbrother, Gabriel, and that she was sorry to inform him that Grey was definitley a boy.  And most likely a heterosexual one as well.  "He flirts with women," she said, "I can feel my dream of having a little gay boy slipping away."

"Oh well," Gabe said, "we'll just have to remember that even though he may be attracted to women, we'll just have to do our best to love him for who he is."

This morning when I walked out of the house to go to work, I heard Grey begin to cry.  I hate to hear him that way, but I selfishly hoped that he was crying for me to come back.  He must have been, because Cari picked him up and brought him right outside so he could watch as I drove off down our street.  I can remember feeling that way about my parents, but I didn't know that it started that early.

I have to admit, it feels wonderful to be wanted in that way.  Different than any way anyone has wanted me to be around before.  I always understand when a pet feels that way about me, but I usually chalk that up to the fact that I feed them, therefore when I leave, they may be worried that they will starve to death.  But I don't feed Grey - not in a life sustaining way.  When I feed him it is more of an excersise than any true attempt at nourishment.  The reason he was upset is simply because he wanted me to be around and he became fearful my walking out the door meant that that was not going to happen.

As I drove away, waiving to Cari and Grey as they stood on the porch, I could see him studying me, studying the car and listening to the sounds it made as I pulled away.  I wondered what he must be thinking.  Probably something along the lines of, "I wonder how many rocks it would take to break all of the windows out of that thing."

Wish List

I have been spending the last two "work days" at home with my family under the guise of a stomach virus and I have come to realize something that I had previously suspected - they are really pleasant people and I would like to see them more often.  It is Tuesday, and I just haven't been able to make myself go to work yet this week.  After the last two days, I am not sure that I will ever be able to go back.

Yesterday, I thought that it might be nice, even satisfying to go back to work one last time and hand in all of the little snares that have been provided for me by my job over the years.  These seemingly harmless items that are portrayed as perks that tether you to the company you work for with an increasing, exponential power.  Yes, I thought it might be really nice to drive out to work one last time and bundle together my work phone, company credit card, pike pass, and office key in one neat little parcel - perhaps with a wide rubber band, I thought.

Fast forward 24 hours and I am thinking that just going to the post office and mailing them is a much better idea.  I can't even stand to think about going back there at this point.  The only reason a person would keep doing something that they did not want to do is because of fear.  Fear of failure, fear of being perceived as utterly irresponsible, fear of being judged.

How can a grown man just quit his job and give up his paycheck and health insurance?  How can he just  throw away everything just because "everything" means nothing to him?

Don't get me wrong, I love paychecks - as a matter of fact, they happen to be my favorite thing about work!  I also love and am grateful for the health insurance that we have been able to afford - it is a great feeling to know that your son's doctor visits are all covered save for $40.00.

But isn't there a way to have that stuff and happiness, too?  If quitting your job to try and do something that makes you happy is irresponsible, what is staying in a job that makes you miserable?  Admirable?  Dutiful?  Ridiculous?

Like most people, I work more than I do anything else in my life.  I now average about 55-60 hours per week - some of that at night or during "off" hours.  I make a large amount of money for my company of which I get to keep a small amount for myself.  I have no fewer than seven bosses that I answer to from Tulsa to Kansas City to Springfield to Chicago.  If I do something stupid enough, I might even find out that I have a few more (Phoenix, perhaps).  I am well thought of at my job and as such have been recently promoted which would seem like a good thing except I could care less.  I can't remember the last time that something happened at my job that led to genuine excitement on my part.  However, I can easily remember all of the times that I knew I was supposed to be excited and had to fake it.

The simple fact of the matter is, I am not cut out for traditional work.  I never have been.  I have always felt that my biggest curse is that I can perform traditional work, so I seem to have no built-in excuse not to.  Well, here is my excuse:  I don't want to.

I realize that at this point I am operating on about the same level as a five year old, but you know what, I am fine with that.  Maybe five year olds have it right.  Most five year olds are much happier than thirty-five year olds or forty-five year olds for that matter.  In fact, I want to do what five year olds do.

I want to run and play and draw and paint and learn and ask questions and build things and invent stories and make up games and laugh like a crazy person when something strikes me as funny and cry like a baby when someone hurts my feelings.  I want to be in awe of my surroundings - I want to be excited about things... genuinely excited.

Since I do very much believe that the Universe brings to you what you ask for, here is my wish list:

• Time - I want lots of time to think and play and figure things out and create.  There is no more precious commodity.  Everything I desire hinges on time.  Time = Freedom.
• I want to walk around and look at things - study things.  Maybe I will draw them, maybe I will paint them, maybe I will simply marvel at them.
• Money.  I want ample amounts of money.  Money to live the life of my dreams, money to aid others, money to start foundations and charities, money to help myself and others.
• I would like to ride my bike to whatever it is I call work.
• I want to spend more time with my family.  Not in a creepy congressional scandal way, but in the real way.  I want to be around Cari and Grey throughout the day.
• I want to be a great father.
• I want to be the best husband.
• I want to create.  I want to write children's books with Cari, I want to write essays, novels, and parenting books.  I want to receive an honorary degree from a prestigious University.  
• I want to sell and market a line of greeting cards that Cari has created, I want to promote other friends and artists that I now know and soon will meet.  I want to show people like me that there is a way for them to have a good life and that there is nothing wrong with having a non-traditional career.
• I want to give back.  I want to help those who need it and teach those that are yearning to be taught.
• I want to to be on CBS Sunday Morning.
• I want to be on NPR - preferably Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
• I would love to be a good cook - not a great one, just a good one.
• I would like to travel - Western Europe, the parts of North America that I haven't seen, and then who knows where else...
• I would like to be good at Yoga.
• I would like to be friends/colleagues of David and Amy Sedaris.
• I am strangely interested in beekeeping - maybe that could be a hobby.
• I would like to live my life, write about my life and get paid for it.  The world is a strange and wonderful place and I think that there maybe aren't enough people keeping record of that.  I would like to volunteer to do that.
• I would like to make/restore furniture.  I have no skill that I know of that would lend itself to this, but I would like to give it a whirl, anyway.
• I would like to be smiling most of the time.  It should be said about me, "he is always smiling."

I would like to have the guts to do something about all of this.  If anyone has any ideas on how I could make this happen, I am listening...