Gunfighter: A Modern Warrior's Life

Domestic Violence Awareness Month

In the past weeks and months, I have been as guilty as any other American in being swept up in the raucous politics of our current Presidential election cycle, but I haven't been so distracted that I have forgotten how important the month of October is for reasons other than campaigning.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

I wrote the following post last year for another blog... I dusted it off and re-present it to you because I think that this is an important subject.

GF

In the United States, October is recognized as Domestic Violence Awareness Month. All across America, worthy organizations and movements like the Clothes Line Project and the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence are speaking out against domestic violence and violence against women. This is a praise-worthy thing... but the world is changing my friends, and it isn't just organizations that are speaking out, Bloggers are speaking too, and this is where I come in.

A couple of days ago, I was contacted by Gina from What About Our Daughters?, A blog dedicated to combating the destructive portrayals of black women in popular culture. Gina asked me to help her out by posting something about Domestic Violence, and I agreed.

While mulling it over, I first thought I would talk a little bit about domestic violence (DV) from a statistical standpoint, and mention that fact that although black people make up thirteen percent of the U.S. population, black women make up twenty-eight percent of the reported victims of DV.

I thought about it, alright, but I decided to take another route.

Instead of raw numbers, I am going to talk about DV from a personal viewpoint. You see, I know a wee bit about the subject. I witnessed it as a child.

My dad was a wife-beater.

An early memory for five year old Gunfighter was my father coming home after working the late shift at Hamilton Air Force Base, California, and getting into an argument with my mother. I have no idea what it was all about, but I remember the shouting turning into screams. Screams coming from my mother, punctuated by the fist-on-flesh thwacking sound that no child should hear coming from his own mother's body.

After scooping my older sister from her bed, my mother ran into the bedroom that I shared with my brother, herded us into our car and drove off into the night. We drove around for a few hours, finally parking on the side of the road, somewhere in Marin County. I am certain that sometime that night, I must have slept, but I remember being awake, as the new day was dawning, seeing my mother just staring blankly out the window.

It was 1968, my mother was 29 years old... and she had nowhere to go.

I'll bet you know what we did next.

If you guessed "you-waited-until-your-dad-went-to-work-and-then-you-went-back-home", you get a cookie.

My life changed that night. That night put me on the road that I travel today... the road that leads to responsible fatherhood. The road that leads to marital respect. The road that leads to being a true man.

That beating wasn't the only one my mother ever got from my father... but it was the worst, and the last. By 1969, my mother had divorced my father, and we moved to New Jersey to live with my Grandmother.

The following years were good for my father. He got help, he remarried, had another child with his second wife (who died in a car crash in 1981), and became a better man than he had been in his dark days. All of this is covered here, so I'll press on.

Like I said... I know a little bit about DV.

I'm fortunate... I didn't repeat the cycle. I don't smack my wife around. I have never hit either of my children (I have two daughters). I would rather stick my hand in a food processor than do those things.

Scientists and Sociologists have opined deeply about the causes of DV, and I suppose that they may be right... but to me I have to say that I believe that spousal abuse is a learned behavior. A behavior passed on from person to person, sometimes father to son.... sometimes passed on by pop culture images or even hero-worship.

I could take this particular moment to go on about the damage done by many of the images in the hip-hop sub-culture, but that horse is dead, and has been beaten by myself and others thousands of times in the past few months. No, I'm not going to blame the rappers specifically (not that they don't share some blame), because there was DV a looong time before the first violent rap lyrics ever showed up.

When dad beats mom, he teaches his son that it is ok to beat women. When dad beats mom, and mom stays silent, she teaches her son that it is ok to beat women, and teaches her daughter that quiet acceptance is alright. When popular athletes, entertainers, members of Congress, or pastors beat their wives, and their supporters close ranks around them and protect them, society teaches boys that violence against women is alright, and teaches girls that even if they speak out, they will be ridiculed, scorned, devalued, and even BLAMED for the violence visited upon them.

Domestic Violence is a social disease and your friend Gunfighter is going to lay down the cure, right here, right now.

There is a cure for Domestic Violence. Here it is: The Man of Character

The Man of Character, is a pillar of strength for his family. They KNOW they can always depend on him to do the right thing.

The Man of Character is a pillar of his community.

The Man of Character isn't a social sponge, sucking up all his community has to offer while giving nothing of himself.

The family of a Man of Character is never afraid for their safety in his presence.

It is the responsibility of men of character to end this cycle of violence. Men of character must lead by example. Men of character must be sterling role-models to their sons. A Man of character must be the kind of man that his daughters will use as their ideal when the time comes for them to think about life-partners. Men of character vote in all elections, men of character are men of personal values.

When a man loves his wife and children in such a manner, all things are possible, and violence has no place. In that sort of environment, a family is doing the best thing that they can do to break the links in the chains of domestic violence.

Men: Don't do it.... ever. If you see or feel yourself going down that road, GET HELP.

Women: Don't put up with it... not even once. Rescue your children and run!

DV is a learned behavior, 'tis true, but one good thing you can say about learned behavior, is that it can't be learned when it isn't seen or heard of.

To some, my answers may sound trite, but it's all I have. If anyone has more and better ideas, I'm all ears.

****ADDENDUM**** It should be noted that domestic violence is not restricted to heterosexual couples. This sickness doesn't have any hangups about same-sex couples/marriages/unions... my message here talks about men of character, but is truly meant for all persons of character.

****NOTE**** When I am King, wife/spouse beaters will be taken to the wall and shot. No clemency. No appeal. No bullshit.

The Mysteries of Love

How do you define true love? 

Have you ever given any real thought to the concept? 

Is true love any different than just plain ol', run o' the mill love?  How does it differ from puppy love?  Is true love different than a crush?

Can you love someone without being their lover?  Is there such thing as true platonic love between people of the opposite sex?  Can you love someone for "their mind"?

These are important questions, friends, and they deserve answers.  Hopefully, you smart folks that read this blog may be able to help me here as I find myself struggling with the answers, for alas, I haven't been able to come up with anything plausible myself.

Here is my quandary:

I'm in love.

With a woman who isn't my wife.

Oh, go ahead and swear.  Go ahead and accuse me of horrible things.  Go ahead... but you don't really have to:  I'll accuse myself.

You see, this love of mine is different, oh, I'm sure most people say the same thing when this sort of thing falls into their lap... but this is true love, you see.  Intellectual love... and you KNOW that Gunfighter is all about the smart chicks.

Alas, my love is unrequited.  I "know" this woman from afar, and I am quite certain that she doesn't know I exist.

Her name?

Her name is Rachel Maddow.

Yes.  Rachel Maddow. 

The same Rachel Maddow of Air America and MSNBC fame.  The same Rachel Maddow who sometimes substitutes for Keith Olbermann, the same Rachel Maddow who skewers "family values" Republicans and reveals them for the hypocrites that they usually are (not that the Democrats aren't full of shit at times, too... let's not be naive). 

This woman is fantastic!

Before you go too far and start emailing me to tell me things like "Dude, you know she's gay, right?", and "Damn, Mrs GF is gonna kick your  ass for bloggin' about this!", or even "Dude, I thought you were a Sunday school teacher?, WTF???"

Well, all of those things are true, but that doesn't mean that I don't love Rachel Maddow.  The good news is that Mrs GF loves her, too.

You see, Mrs Gunfighter isn't gay, but she and Ms Maddow have some things in common.  They are both really, REALLY smart.  They are both professional women, they are both accomplished in their fields, they both have Ph.D's from swanky British Universities... and they both know their politics  They know their politics and aren't apt to get so emotionally clouded by them, so that they can get right to the heart of a political matter and see it for what it is... not for what they perhaps might like it to be. 

Most people should be so fortunate.

In case you hadn't heard, Rachel is getting her own show on MSNBC, starting next week.

I can hardly wait (of course, I'll have to TiVo it, because I'm getting old, and tend to doze off in front of the TV these days).

The Rest of America - A Report From "Flyover Country"

A fellow progressive blogger, a smart lady called Cynematic, recently posted a piece at the MOMocrats blog, that reminded me of the following post that I wrote in 2006, just a week or so after starting this blog.  I took a moment to re-read it, and thought that I would support Cyn, by re-posting it here.  I have inserted a few images, and all other additions, other than stylistic will appear in red text.

Enjoy!

GF

Recently Uncle Sam sent me to Altoona, Pennsylvania, to attend a week-long course on pistol, rifle, and shotgun repair. It was a class that I needed to take because guns get a lot of hard use (at least, they do where I work), and from time to time, they break and need to be repaired or worn parts need to be replaced.

This wasn’t the first time I had been to Altoona, and it won’t be the last, but this was the first time I had an extended stay in this blue-collar town in the midst of rural Blair County, Pennsylvania.

While the subject of firearms repair is mildly interesting, it isn’t quantum physics, so it didn’t consume my evenings with study. This gave me plenty of time to take a good hard look around at a part of America that urban coastal guys like me aren’t terribly far from, but rarely ever see.

The Altoona area has been settled since the middle of the 18th century, but the Pennsylvania railroad is what put the town on the map. By the middle of the 19th century, the railroad system was how people and goods moved about the country in large numbers. Since railroads were becoming so important to the economy, railroad centers became important regional centers. Altoona was one of those centers, and as a result  the population exploded.  One of the results of said population explosion was that Altoona grew rapidly, and subsumed another town, Juniata (pronounced Jew-knee-AH-ta), into itself. What was a newly incorporated borough in the mid 1850’s became an incorporated city by 1868. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw the end of the steam age and brought in the diesel locomotives of today, and by the end of World War II, Altoona had seen it’s population at it’s high-water mark.

Altoona continues to be the regional population center, such as it is, but with the decline of the railroads as the way most people travel long-distance, it has fallen on hard times… or so I thought.

When you drive through Altoona, it strikes you as a classic down-at-heel mill town… sort of reminiscent of the town that the Robert DeNiro, John Savage, and Christopher Walken characters in “The Deer Hunter" lived in. Old houses that had their best days many years ago dominate the central part of town. It appears, at first glance, that the local area high school, and its well-kept athletic fields, is the focal point of the community.

The people of Altoona, if what I saw was accurate, are a religious lot… and if you don’t believe me, you should see how many churches are in this town (pictured here is Trinity Lutheran, on 6th street). The people of Altoona are a patriotic lot as well, the area's Army and Naval reserve and National Guard units having served in all of America’s wars. One of the ladies at Wendy’s has a son that just joined the Army. She is worried about him, but is proud of her son’s decision. As a matter of fact, nearly every man that I spoke to while I was in Altoona was a fellow veteran.

Altoona also has a minor league baseball team, the Altoona Curve.  I drove past the stadium and wished that I would be in town for a game, but alas, the season was a week or so away, and I wouldn’t be there that long.

Another thing you will notice in Altoona (well, if you are me, anyway) is that everyone looks the same, which is to say, that I was in town two days before I saw any black people other than the guy I always see in the mirror when I shave. It was rather odd when I walked into the local Wal-Mart and was met with open staring. One woman actually bumped into her husband while she gaped, open-mouthed. The ice was broken when I laughed and told her to try not to hurt herself. The Instructor for our course (a crusty old former Navy SEAL), remarked on the first day, that our class had drastically, if only temporarily, changed the demographics of the town, where, as he put it, “die-ver-sit-tee” ain’t Altoona’s strong point, men”. He wasn’t kidding. There were 12 men in the class and 6 were white, 5 were black, and one was Latino.

Lest you think this is going to be a discussion of rural Pennsylvania racism, I urge you to read on.

The people of Altoona that I encountered (referred to by one of their own as “Altoids”) were mostly very friendly and cheerful people. The ladies at the Wendy’s restaurant, where we ate lunch a few times, were eager to chat, and were very solicitous about our comfort while we ate our three-dollar burgers (and yes, I did have fries with that).

Determined to find out what Altoona was all about, I spent a fair amount of time just driving around looking at places as well as a fair amount of time sampling places to eat. I had dinner at three different Chinese buffets while I was in Altoona, all of which were along Plank road, which is Altoona’s economic jugular vein. One of them (across the street from the Veteran's Hospital) was REALLY good, the other two were quite unremarkable… but the people were nice. I also went to a place called CiCi’s Pizza (located next to Wal-Mart… also on Plank road). CiCi’s is a pizza buffet, which I wasn’t really in the mood for, but it was getting late, and I hadn’t eaten in nearly 8 hours (hungry Gunfighter means CRANKY Gunfighter... Cranky Gunfighter... not good), so in I went. "WELCOME TO CiCi’s!!”, the teenaged girl behind the counter bellowed at me, almost causing me to beat a hasty retreat. The pizza was fair; the atmosphere was a cross between Sizzler and your high-school cafeteria. I read while I ate my dinner and then quickly made for the door. Before I could put my hand on the push-bar, the barely-out-of-her teens manager rushed up to me and bellowed (bellowing is obviously a big thing in Altoona) “Thank you for dining at CiCi’s! We’ll See-See ya later!” (“No you won’t", I thought to myself).

NOTE: Before I went to Altoona, I had never heard of CiCi's Pizza... now they are everywhere, including good 'l' Woodbridge, Virginia.

So, let’s recap, the people were nice, the streets were pretty clean, the town isn’t terribly diverse, the young folks like to bellow… ok, moving on.

I was saving the highlight of Altoona’s retail pleasures for my next to last night in town, and THAT was the local mall… on Plank road, next to K-Mart, which I visited the night before. The mall had all of the standard stores, the jewelry stores, a skate shop, several athletic shoe stores, the obligatory cellular phone kiosks, etc… but the place was devoid of any sort of soul. Even Sears was rather lifeless! Damn! My yardstick for many places is how much I like the local mall. Well, Altoona failed miserably in that respect… but I have to give the place a break, since it is kind of unfair to make a comparison to a mall in that area to any of the myriad malls in the DC suburbs.

The next evening, my classmates were going to go to a local place for dinner and drinks, but, I went to the regional library instead (on 17th street, NOT Plank road, thank you, very much). On this beautiful spring-like afternoon, as I was about to enter the library, I met a lady named Judy. Judy works at the county Senior Services Center... a delightful, silver haired, 61 year old with whom I chatted about politics, social issues, our mutual dislike of the current occupant of the White House, our sorrow at the waste of lives that our war in Iraq is producing, and saving the world. Judy is married to a retired Coast Guardsman, and is the main reason that I decided to write about this place, for reasons that I hope to make clear, below.

You see, Judy made me realize that Altoona, and by extension, other places like it, is a different place than perhaps we metropolitan east and west coasters think. Often, we derisively call places like Altoona “flyover country”. It isn’t fair, and it's not right (who can give me the musical reference???). We hip, urbane, in-the-know people think that since we live in major population centers and work in finance, government, the arts, the law, or the widely-distributed media, that we have a better grasp on things happening in this country.

We don’t.

We liken people that live in places like Altoona to be backward hicks. They aren’t. They are the population of what I call “The Rest of America”… people that spend their days working to raise families and live their lives… lives that started and will likely end very near where they live today. They have views and opinions shaped by their experiences, and those experiences, like my own or your own, make them think and believe as they do. Their experiences may be different than ours, but the opinions and views that are shaped by them are no less valid than our own.

I spent nearly an hour talking to Judy, and was very pleased with our conversation. She had spark and vitality that I smugly wouldn’t have thought to find in a place “like this”. When we parted ways, I decided people had to know, or at least that I had to tell someone what was on my mind.

I know that not all who read this live in or near major metropolitan areas, but rest assured that there is at least one person in my America that isn’t ignoring you and doesn’t think that you are any less worthy than someone that does.

I promise to pay more attention in the future.

Two years down the road from when I originally wrote this, I'm still paying attention.  As it turns out, the two different Americas aren't as different as we may have thought.  Sure, differences remain... what else can you expect from a country as large as this one.  The important thing is that we are still one America, and if you don't believe me, take a look at the candidacy of Barack Obama.  His campaign is living, breathing, walking, talking proof that the America the my parents were raised in has for the most part been washed away. 

I am excited by this new America, where all of you who read this, who have children under the age of sixteen, will raise their kids into adulthood, never knowing an America where you had to be male AND white to aspire to the highest offices in the land.

A fellow progressive blogger, a smart lady called Cynematic, recently posted a piece at the MOMocrats blog, that reminded me of the following post that I wrote in 2006, just a week or so after starting this blog.  I took a moment to re-read it, and thought that I would support Cyn, by re-posting it here.  I have inserted a few images, and all other additions, other than stylistic will appear in red text.

Enjoy!

GF

Recently Uncle Sam sent me to Altoona, Pennsylvania, to attend a week-long course on pistol, rifle, and shotgun repair. It was a class that I needed to take because guns get a lot of hard use (at least, they do where I work), and from time to time, they break and need to be repaired or worn parts need to be replaced.

This wasn’t the first time I had been to Altoona, and it won’t be the last, but this was the first time I had an extended stay in this blue-collar town in the midst of rural Blair County, Pennsylvania.

While the subject of firearms repair is mildly interesting, it isn’t quantum physics, so it didn’t consume my evenings with study. This gave me plenty of time to take a good hard look around at a part of America that urban coastal guys like me aren’t terribly far from, but rarely ever see.

The Altoona area has been settled since the middle of the 18th century, but the Pennsylvania railroad is what put the town on the map. By the middle of the 19th century, the railroad system was how people and goods moved about the country in large numbers. Since railroads were becoming so important to the economy, railroad centers became important regional centers. Altoona was one of those centers, and as a result  the population exploded.  One of the results of said population explosion was that Altoona grew rapidly, and subsumed another town, Juniata (pronounced Jew-knee-AH-ta), into itself. What was a newly incorporated borough in the mid 1850’s became an incorporated city by 1868. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw the end of the steam age and brought in the diesel locomotives of today, and by the end of World War II, Altoona had seen it’s population at it’s high-water mark.

Altoona continues to be the regional population center, such as it is, but with the decline of the railroads as the way most people travel long-distance, it has fallen on hard times… or so I thought.

When you drive through Altoona, it strikes you as a classic down-at-heel mill town… sort of reminiscent of the town that the Robert DeNiro, John Savage, and Christopher Walken characters in “The Deer Hunter" lived in. Old houses that had their best days many years ago dominate the central part of town. It appears, at first glance, that the local area high school, and its well-kept athletic fields, is the focal point of the community.

The people of Altoona, if what I saw was accurate, are a religious lot… and if you don’t believe me, you should see how many churches are in this town (pictured here is Trinity Lutheran, on 6th street). The people of Altoona are a patriotic lot as well, the area's Army and Naval reserve and National Guard units having served in all of America’s wars. One of the ladies at Wendy’s has a son that just joined the Army. She is worried about him, but is proud of her son’s decision. As a matter of fact, nearly every man that I spoke to while I was in Altoona was a fellow veteran.

Altoona also has a minor league baseball team, the Altoona Curve.  I drove past the stadium and wished that I would be in town for a game, but alas, the season was a week or so away, and I wouldn’t be there that long.

Another thing you will notice in Altoona (well, if you are me, anyway) is that everyone looks the same, which is to say, that I was in town two days before I saw any black people other than the guy I always see in the mirror when I shave. It was rather odd when I walked into the local Wal-Mart and was met with open staring. One woman actually bumped into her husband while she gaped, open-mouthed. The ice was broken when I laughed and told her to try not to hurt herself. The Instructor for our course (a crusty old former Navy SEAL), remarked on the first day, that our class had drastically, if only temporarily, changed the demographics of the town, where, as he put it, “die-ver-sit-tee” ain’t Altoona’s strong point, men”. He wasn’t kidding. There were 12 men in the class and 6 were white, 5 were black, and one was Latino.

Lest you think this is going to be a discussion of rural Pennsylvania racism, I urge you to read on.

The people of Altoona that I encountered (referred to by one of their own as “Altoids”) were mostly very friendly and cheerful people. The ladies at the Wendy’s restaurant, where we ate lunch a few times, were eager to chat, and were very solicitous about our comfort while we ate our three-dollar burgers (and yes, I did have fries with that).

Determined to find out what Altoona was all about, I spent a fair amount of time just driving around looking at places as well as a fair amount of time sampling places to eat. I had dinner at three different Chinese buffets while I was in Altoona, all of which were along Plank road, which is Altoona’s economic jugular vein. One of them (across the street from the Veteran's Hospital) was REALLY good, the other two were quite unremarkable… but the people were nice. I also went to a place called CiCi’s Pizza (located next to Wal-Mart… also on Plank road). CiCi’s is a pizza buffet, which I wasn’t really in the mood for, but it was getting late, and I hadn’t eaten in nearly 8 hours (hungry Gunfighter means CRANKY Gunfighter... Cranky Gunfighter... not good), so in I went. "WELCOME TO CiCi’s!!”, the teenaged girl behind the counter bellowed at me, almost causing me to beat a hasty retreat. The pizza was fair; the atmosphere was a cross between Sizzler and your high-school cafeteria. I read while I ate my dinner and then quickly made for the door. Before I could put my hand on the push-bar, the barely-out-of-her teens manager rushed up to me and bellowed (bellowing is obviously a big thing in Altoona) “Thank you for dining at CiCi’s! We’ll See-See ya later!” (“No you won’t", I thought to myself).

NOTE: Before I went to Altoona, I had never heard of CiCi's Pizza... now they are everywhere, including good 'l' Woodbridge, Virginia.

So, let’s recap, the people were nice, the streets were pretty clean, the town isn’t terribly diverse, the young folks like to bellow… ok, moving on.

I was saving the highlight of Altoona’s retail pleasures for my next to last night in town, and THAT was the local mall… on Plank road, next to K-Mart, which I visited the night before. The mall had all of the standard stores, the jewelry stores, a skate shop, several athletic shoe stores, the obligatory cellular phone kiosks, etc… but the place was devoid of any sort of soul. Even Sears was rather lifeless! Damn! My yardstick for many places is how much I like the local mall. Well, Altoona failed miserably in that respect… but I have to give the place a break, since it is kind of unfair to make a comparison to a mall in that area to any of the myriad malls in the DC suburbs.

The next evening, my classmates were going to go to a local place for dinner and drinks, but, I went to the regional library instead (on 17th street, NOT Plank road, thank you, very much). On this beautiful spring-like afternoon, as I was about to enter the library, I met a lady named Judy. Judy works at the county Senior Services Center... a delightful, silver haired, 61 year old with whom I chatted about politics, social issues, our mutual dislike of the current occupant of the White House, our sorrow at the waste of lives that our war in Iraq is producing, and saving the world. Judy is married to a retired Coast Guardsman, and is the main reason that I decided to write about this place, for reasons that I hope to make clear, below.

You see, Judy made me realize that Altoona, and by extension, other places like it, is a different place than perhaps we metropolitan east and west coasters think. Often, we derisively call places like Altoona “flyover country”. It isn’t fair, and it's not right (who can give me the musical reference???). We hip, urbane, in-the-know people think that since we live in major population centers and work in finance, government, the arts, the law, or the widely-distributed media, that we have a better grasp on things happening in this country.

We don’t.

We liken people that live in places like Altoona to be backward hicks. They aren’t. They are the population of what I call “The Rest of America”… people that spend their days working to raise families and live their lives… lives that started and will likely end very near where they live today. They have views and opinions shaped by their experiences, and those experiences, like my own or your own, make them think and believe as they do. Their experiences may be different than ours, but the opinions and views that are shaped by them are no less valid than our own.

I spent nearly an hour talking to Judy, and was very pleased with our conversation. She had spark and vitality that I smugly wouldn’t have thought to find in a place “like this”. When we parted ways, I decided people had to know, or at least that I had to tell someone what was on my mind.

I know that not all who read this live in or near major metropolitan areas, but rest assured that there is at least one person in my America that isn’t ignoring you and doesn’t think that you are any less worthy than someone that does.

I promise to pay more attention in the future.

Two years down the road from when I originally wrote this, I'm still paying attention.  As it turns out, the two different Americas aren't as different as we may have thought.  Sure, differences remain... what else can you expect from a country as large as this one.  The important thing is that we are still one America, and if you don't believe me, take a look at the candidacy of Barack Obama.  His campaign is living, breathing, walking, talking proof that the America the my parents were raised in has for the most part been washed away. 

I am excited by this new America, where all of you who read this, who have children under the age of sixteen, will raise their kids into adulthood, never knowing an America where you had to be male AND white to aspire to the highest offices in the land.

And now For Something Totally Different

Yesterday, I had an unusual experience.

Something that has never happend to me in my ten years of experience as a tactical firearms instructor. I was working with some agents from a different agency, helping them and their instructors through pistol and shotgun qualification, when I noticed something. Something important.

Most of the agents, and their lead instructor were women.

It's not unusual* to be shooting with female officers and agents... I work with quite a few women, but generally speaking, women do not make up the bulk of the agents I work with.

Of the seven shooters I had yesterday, five were women.

On top of that, they were all very young... the youngest was only 21! They made me feel very old... especially as I was giving instructions... they were all calling me "sir". I'm not sure if the sir business was a matter of respect for my skills and position or just because I'm an old dude (probably the latter).

Most of them were at least decent shooters, which was a plus.

ADDENDUM: I am self-aware enough to realize that I am probably most-bothered by the fact that they were women... not girls, not teenagers... Adult women, calling me sir.

Friggin' middle age!

*Hat tip to Tom Jones

I am NOT the Babysitter!

So... there I was: A newly minted father. Ready to be the participatory dad that I believe all men should be.

During Mrs G's pregnancy, I had done all the right things... gone to Lamaze; read the "what to expect..." books; made the baby's room ready (Well, I painted and lifted... Mrs G did the planning); and went to the appropriate appointments. I had all of the right gear, too!

I was ready.

Soccer Girl(SG) arrived a few weeks early, but no worries, she was (and still is) supremely healthy and hearty (and by God, my kid can eat!).

I took three weeks of leave from work so I could be with Mrs G and do as I said... be a full participant. We learned a lot, and did pretty much all of the right things. We even took turns sleeping with SG in the glider chair that my dad gave us, because SG wasn't even THINKING about sleeping in the crib, yet.

Well, those three weeks came and went and it was time for me to go back to work. Mrs G would be out for another three or four weeks, but this way, if I went back to work, I'd have more leave on the books so I could take off at need.

Since I was back at work, Mrs G, obviously had to pull more of the freight with the baby stuff, and I would return home to find her wiped out. Seeing this, I started taking SG to the local mall so her mommy could sleep, read, recharge or whatever for a few hours.

One evening, as I was walking through the mall with the stroller, SG started to cry... so I checked the diaper (it was clean/dry), I checked to see if there was anything poking her, and I figured she was just hungry. Well, no worries, I sat on a bench and prepared one of the several bottles that I had brought with me.


(No, that isn't me)

The bench we were sitting on was right outside of the Payless shoe store, and while I fed SG, the lady working in Payless stood at the entrance of the store and looked at us and smiled. Being a proud father, I smiled back. She looked up one end of the hall and down the other like she was looking for something and then walked over to us and said: "Where is her mother?", to which I replied (proudly) "At home, having a nap" The woman, in her mid-thirties I'd guess, looked shocked and said: "She LET you take the baby out... ALONE?"

I guess you won't be surprised to hear that I took great umbrage (don't you love that word?) at her question and the tone in which it was delivered. I told her that I knew what I was doing and my wife needed the rest, or words to that effect. Then she pushed all of the rest of my buttons at once, by saying: "She is a lucky lady to have dad babysit for her!, I'd never let my huband do that"

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh! Danger Will Robinson! Danger! Danger!

I was pretty mad but refrained from telling her to go... er, jump in a lake. I told her that I wasn't babysitting, I was PARENTING, and if her husband didn't do any of the parenting of their babies, perhaps she should have found a better man. Oh, and what's with this crap about "letting" a father take care of his kids??? What? since when do I need permission?

It only got worse. As our evening strolls in the mall went on, I would often see other parents, all moms, walking with their babies. As much as I liked to talk to them about baby stuff, I eventually had to stop talking to them altogether, because if one more of those bitches women had said: "I wish MY husband would babysit!" I would have committed bloody murder!

I used to hear it so much, and sometimes still do, that I want to scream "I'm not a babysitter. I am this child's father! What is wrong with you people?" and then punch the offender in the face.

I'm still sensitive about it... when SG and I go to the mall or bookstore or someplace else, women get all googley-eyed because we are having fun together. I swear, I am sick of the "aw, that's so cute routine" routine.

I suppose some of you are probably laughing yourselves silly about this. I suppose there are some who would read this and wonder what business any man had being involved in their kid's life to that extent. Well, I am here to tell you that I don't think it's funny.

What kind of man can't take care of his children? I don't mean support his children... I mean take CARE of them. Feed them, clean them, and do all of the other million things that a baby needs. Men who can't, or worse, won't do those things, in my opinion, are beneath contempt. Indeed, I don't think they are real men at all.



Ladies, if you are single and reading this... take a little advice from your ol' Uncle Gunfighter: If your potential husband seems even slightly unwilling to be a FULLY participatory father... dump him immediately. He isn't a real man. Additionally, don't be a barrier to your husband's full participation.

Men: Take the time to be full participants when your kids are infants. It will be an incredible experience that will make you closer to your kids later on, and to your wife.