Fairy tales are more than true:
not because they tell us that dragons exist,
but because they tell us that dragons can be BEATEN!
---GK Chesterton
Book Two of the Rats of Green Park is meant to be darker, animals are going to die. The Rats start to realize that the events of the first book need to be named. Bad things have happened, and with the war on the horizon more is to come. I'm about 20 pages deep into the next book. An opportunity arose, and I did it. I shot someone. Well, not me, not for reals, but yep, I wrote the scene where someone died. I had to think long and hard about doing it.
I exist in a fractured state of mind when it comes to guns. I grew up in Texas on a horse farm. My first gun was a .22 with an ammo loader in the stock.(Meaning you slide a bullet in through a hole in the stock. Which my father promptly ordered me not to do, because it jams. Like many things in life, just because it looks cool doesn't mean it works right.) It was for shooting snakes, and scaring away wild dogs from the livestock. Yes, we had packs of wild dogs. They were homeless pets. They would roam the farms killing small pets, birds and livestock. Some were abandoned, some left their farms of their own accord, but they all went feral. I would hear their barks in the distance and dream what their life was like. Roaming, fighting, feeding, running unfettered through riverbanks. A wild dog's life is brutal and short, but I think there is a joy they must feel running wild.
Back to the subject:guns. Where I grew up, people hunted and ate what they killed. We had guns in our house. Some were locked away, and some were stashed in easy to grab places, in case of a problem. I remember once when my parents were on vacation, I heard a ruckus outside. I walked into the living room, picked up my .22 from behind the couch, stepped out on the porch, and hollered at the truck and horse trailer parked in our front pasture, my rifle pointed in their direction.
"Can I help you with something?"
It was my Aunt Sherry unloading stuff into a horse trailer parked in the front pasture. She didn't tell anyone she was coming by on her way home to New Orleans, and was completely oblivious to the fact it was 3am. She told me to quit making a fuss and go to bed. Actually, she called me an idiot and to get my butt back to bed. My dad was incensed that I would stand backlit by a porch light while holding a gun. I had made myself an easier target that way. Mom was proud of me. She said that she felt better knowing that if it had been horse rustlers my first instinct was to scare them away.
I am comfortable with guns, they don't scare me. People scare me, and that is the sticking point for me about guns. I don't own a gun. I never felt the need to own one. But my dad loves his guns. He has entire caches of exotic weaponry. Mostly foreign gear brought back from overseas wars that he buys at gun shows. I can appreciate those things for the historical value they represent.
But, the wholesale shootings that have overtaken our country makes me support the idea of gun control. There are too many angry crazy people in the world, and we should make arming them much more difficult.
I feel sorry for the shooters as well as the victims.
Hear me out. The first major shooting I was alive for was Columbine. I felt sorry for those two boys. I felt like their bullies had won. I could tell what kind of nerds the were just by looking at their pictures. Goth, emo, painfully awkward, and prime targets for Jock jerks. In the pecking order of the school they were at the corn level, everyone was above them and more than ready to peck their eyes out for moving.
I wasn't a popular kid. I wasn't pretty. I was loud, fat , and opinionated. And I got knocked down, a lot. If I had been pretty I might have been precocious, but I wasn't so I was more pugnacious. I got hammered daily. I used to have crying jags at the end of summer vacation. The bullying wasn't one big event, it was a series of blows that lasted years. My one big wish was to be invisible, just to be left alone. I couldn't even picture what a happy successful version of myself would be at that time. I just didn't want to be tortured on a daily basis. AND believe you me, I had the means and wherewithal to blow my school sky high. I never did it. Even though I knew in my heart that if I had blown that whole town away, the shallow end of the human gene pool would get just a little deeper. The jerk population of the world would drop by a few hundred.
I also knew that it would be my end game, and none of them were worth giving up my life for. That is why I felt so bad for those two. I know they were beaten and bullied until suicide/shooting spree seemed like the only way to redeem themselves. They ended everything for themselves once they sought revenge. Anything cool or amazing they might have seen or done-Gone. Any children they might have had, any lives they might have changed for the better-Gone.
So very sad.
I know guns and shooting sprees are considered an adult topic, but I also believe in the old saying:
Little pitchers have big ears
My mom used to say that all the time. It refers to the handles on teapots and creamers. The teapot is big, the creamer is small, but both have about the same sized handle. It means children hear EVERYTHING! They interpret what they can with their short life experiences, but they still hear all of it. I know all of you know about the shootings and bombings that cover the earth. I think a conversation should be had. Why do people do crazy things? Why do they kill?
I'm not finishing the conversation. I'm opening it. I don't have definite views on gun ownership. But I do have them for bullying. I know with constant harassment, anyone can be turned crazy or mean. I'm glad more attention is being paid to the subject.
Well, my darlings. That's all I got today. I do want to tell you, I'm doing a free giveaway of my book Feb12-14 in celebration of V-Day. Click on the link below to take you there. Please review my book if you read it. I want your honest feedback, so I can learn from you.
The Rat Father
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