The Right to Bear Arms

One of the biggest topics of conversation lately, other than the NCAA basketball brackets, is the subject of gun control.  Like all political issues, there are groups on each side of this topic that are passionate in their beliefs.  There is a large group of the public that is floating in the middle of the pool.  They have thoughts that cause them to float to one side of the debate but then the waves can take them to the opposite side.  There seems to be a belief that you have to be ultra pro-gun or mega pro-control.  I am one of those floating somewhere in the middle.  So, here goes my first politically based blog post.

I believe, as a United States citizen, I should be able to own and carry a gun if I qualify for one.  I am required to pass a test and obey certain laws to have and keep a drivers license.  If I want to legally catch a fish, I have to fill out a form and get a fishing license.  I show my identification when I purchase alcohol, and I have had a criminal background check done prior to volunteering at my children's school.  When I adopted my dog from a rescue group, I filled out a four or five page application, had to give three references, and list the name and number of my veterinarian to make sure I would be a responsible pet owner.  I follow all these guidelines to show that whatever it is that I am pursuing, I am willing to show the powers that be that I meet the requirements listed for the desired task.  If I am found not to possess the basic skills needed to safely drive a car, or own a dog, or hook a blue gill, that privilege is taken away from me.  If I decide to continue these activities regardless, then if I am caught I can be punished on varying levels of severity.

My father was a police officer for 20 years and an avid hunter.  I would estimate that the number of rifles and handguns in our home for most of my childhood probably numbered around ten.  My siblings and I knew where they were.  The rifles were not kept loaded, but we knew where the ammunition was.  The handguns were loaded, no trigger locks, and kept out of reach, but all it would have taken was a kitchen chair pushed into to the bedroom closet to get them.  My father carried a gun every time he left our property line.  He not only wore a gun to work, but he carried a gun to church, the grocery store, to our cousin's house for birthday parties, and even to grandma's house for Thanksgiving dinner.  He usually would take it off when we got to our relative's home and put it on top of the refrigerator.  When it was time to go, the gun was placed back on this hip.  However, you would never have known he was ever, "packing heat."  His small, off duty gun was always covered by his shirt.  My dad never tucked in his shirts because they concealed his weapon.  If my dad's badge was hidden in his wallet, then his gun was hidden under his shirt.  The only time my dad's revolver was obviously displayed was when he was in uniform and his badge was as well.  Out of uniform, he did not want people to know he was carrying a gun.  It was there in case he needed it, not to let people know he had the right to carry it.  We were taught about how guns worked, how to clean them (I can smell the gun oil in my mind), and how to respect them.  They were not toys, they were not to represent status, and they could not only protect but also kill.  When your father is a cop, you want him to carry a gun to work with him, and you want to make sure his bullet-proof vest (which he wore every night) is just an uncomfortable wardrobe accessory.

I do not think gun control should mean that people can no longer own guns.  I know that any type of gun regulation is not going to prevent criminals from being able to get firearms that they will use in violent crimes.  I do think there should be guidelines as to what kind of weapons should be available for private ownership.  Prescription drugs are regulated and require a doctor to issue them.  Many prescription drugs have become the most popular street drugs, so obviously the wrong people are getting access to them.  But, what would it be like if Oxycontin was available to buy like aspirin?  People can get their hands on it if they want, but if they are caught with it, there are legal repercussions. 

When it comes to gun control, I want my law enforcement and military officers to have access to better weapons than the public.  I do not want the asshole who sells crack out of his kitchen to be able to buy an assault rifle that holds 30+ rounds.  During a recent demonstration against gun control, a supporter was holding a sign that said, "Criminals don't register their guns."  This is true.  Responsible gun owners register their weapons.  Responsible gun owners educate their children on how to respect firearms.  However, responsible gun owners cannot deny the fact that not everyone can be trusted with the responsibility of a gun.  Do not start quoting the Second Amendment without thinking of the responsibility that comes with it.  We have driver's education and learner's permits before we allow a person to drive a car.  They have a written test, a driving test, and a vision test to pass before they can legally operate the vehicle.  Responsible drivers abide traffic laws, have auto insurance, do not drive while impaired, and keep their vehicles maintained.  Irresponsible drivers do none of these and are commonly the ones that are the cause of fatal accidents.  Imagine if the irresponsible drivers had access to an Indy car.  Even more damage could be done with a vehicle that goes 200 mph.  I know that people will read this and say these examples are not comparable to the issues of gun control.  I think they are.

If guns are legal to buy and own, make the purchaser prove they are qualified for the responsibility.  They should have a clean criminal background check.  They should be able to show they can load, operate, and unload the firearms.  They should be given materials and resources on gun safety for homes with children.  There should be categories of weapons that are not accessible to people outside of law enforcement or military personnel.  If you need an Uzi to defend your home, you probably are involved in something illegal or you are a Cuban immigrant being played by Al Pacino.  I believe most pro-gun activists are responsible gun owners.  What they need to see is that there need to be regulations since not everyone can be a responsible gun owner.  I also do not want the government to reduce my options and privileges, but I do not oppose proving that I am able to be trusted in my choices.  If someone were to illegally enter my home, they would hear the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being cocked. If that sound alone does not make them wet their pants and leave, then I am glad I have that tool at my disposal to protect my family, my home, and myself from an uninvited intruder. 

We live in a different world than when our Bill of Rights was written.  A world where people walk into movie theaters and shoot random people for no reason.  Children are shot in their schools.  People make illegal drugs in their garage out of the medicines most of us take for sinus congestion.  Weirdos kidnap children and hold them in backyard bunkers for years.  I think there must be a way to find some middle ground that still gives people the, "Right to Bear Arms," while making sure they can do it with accountability. 

Which Spring Break are you on this year?

My daughters are on Spring Break this week.  As a family, we have no scheduled plans, and it is unfortunate that the Indiana weather does not look as if it is going to be favorable.  So, we are going to do our best to spend some quality time with one another, do a couple fun things, and try not to kill each other with all the, "togetherness."  I started thinking about the different types of Spring Breaks.  Here are a few to choose from.  Which one are you on?

1. "Woo-Hoo!!!!  I'm on Spring Break" - this type is the kind where you are usually a senior in high school or maybe in your first few years of college.  Most participants are unsupervised, intoxicated, irresponsible, and that is alright with them.  I was on this type of Spring Break in 1989.  The scene was Panama City, Florida, and it was me, four friends, and thousands of other high school seniors.  I cannot (will not) go into the details of our trip.  I would just like to give a big shout-out to the boys from Dunwoody, Georgia, our fine men in the U.S. Navy, and the Hand of God for getting all of us home without getting arrested...or worse.
2. "Oh, it's Spring Break?" - this is the phrase muttered by people who are too old to be on Spring Break themselves and too young to have children on Spring Break.  They reminisce about the days when Spring Break meant something to them.  Those memories are soon followed by the realization that half their coworkers will be gone for the next five business days.  Guess who gets to work overtime picking up all the slack?  Yep, all those taking part in Spring Break type #2.
3. "It's Spring Break week already?" - this is the type of break we are on in my house.  This is when you do not have a vacation planned, so the week the kids are off school literally sneaks up on you.  I was reading my daughters' school newsletter two weeks ago when the calendar printed inside showed the days of Spring Break.  I actually had to read it twice and look at the calendar in my iPhone.  I genuinely forgot when my girls were out of school.  Lucky for me that my life is not filled with spontaneous adventure (read in a highly sarcastic tone)!

This week is going to be very low key and generally boring for me and the family.  We were going to take my grandmother out to lunch, but she doesn't want to go out in the rain or snow, so that was cancelled.  We were going to try to go to the Indianapolis Zoo, but the 30-degree temperatures and daily chance of snow/rain cancelled that.  So, we will try to be content with an afternoon movie one day, lunch and hanging out with some friends on another day, and a late bedtime every night. 

I would like to thank all those teachers who have made their life's commitment to educate our children.  They are really the ones that need and deserve a break.  I am pretty sure the teachers were smiling wider than the students on that last day before break.

Happy Spring Break to everyone out there.  Whether you are celebrating version #1 (be careful and safe), #2 (it's only a week, and you could use the overtime pay, right?), or #3 (let's just get through the week without fighting), make the most of it.  Oh, and mark your calendars for summer vacation.  It will be here before you know it.

Could you describe the "funk?"

There are certain words in my vocabulary that I just could not live without.  Words that may have a secondary or slang meaning that are slightly undefinable; they become the perfect way to define a situation, a person, or a mood.  I love to go into long, elaborate descriptions with adjectives that mentally construct an entire scene in a reader's mind.  However, sometimes I do no want to work that hard to get my point across.  One example is the word, "douche bag."  Yes, we all know what the literal definition is of a douche bag, but I never use it in that context.  To me, when you describe someone as a, "douche bag," people know exactly what kind of person that is.  It makes people wrinkle up their nose, lift an eyebrow, and shake their head.  They instantly know they do not want to get any closer to that person than they would getting to know an actual douche bag.

Today's word is, "funk."  Someone can be funky in a good way.  Something can smell funky in a very bad way.  I tend to use the word funk to describe a mood.  "Being in a funk," to me translates to, "I'm kind of cranky, not exactly sad, but maybe just in a rut."  I love winter, but this time of year puts me in a funk where I am ready for spring.  Lots of people get depressed during the winter months because of the fewer hours of sunlight.  It is called Seasonal Affective Disorder (awwww, even the acronym is SAD).  I like winter.  I love snow and knitting scarves and Christmas.  What I do not like is when it is 60 degrees one day and 34 degrees the next.  My backyard is no longer a lovely, white, snowy paradise.  It is a soggy, squishy, still half looking dead grassy plain where the melted snow has revealed an abandoned sled and numerous piles of dog doo doo.  Outside it is grey and damp, and in my mind it is hard to do anything but nap.

I probably get in a few funks a year.  My previous blog posts (namely any post I wrote in February) sometimes reflect the level of funkiness I am experiencing.  Maybe I will start referring to the second month of the year as Funkuary because it always seems to start off my end-of-winter funk.  I do not think being in a funk is a bad thing.  I just see them as times I need to get through and be happy when they are over.  If I was happy all the time I would teeter on the edge of perfect...and I cannot disappoint those who love my bitchy, snarky side.  We all go through times where we look around and think, "Is this all there is?"  Maybe we look in the mirror and realize what we are looking at is not a lie; yes, our butt really is that big.  We get down about our lives or ourselves or the weather.  All you can do is to realize the funk you are in is temporary.  Find a way to get past it, or find a friend who needs you to help them through their funk.  If the funk is all consuming and smothering, go see a doctor or take a vacation to someplace sunny.  I have found that a big dose of beach sand poured over your toes is a great cure for many disorders.

So, all that said, I am going to take a little nap and dream of Key West.  I would love to be sipping a cold drink at Sloppy Joe's bar, feeling the breezes, and watching the people walk by.  Oh, but as far as, "funks," go, I found you don't play around with that Funky Cold Medina.

When I grow up, I'm gonna be......

A doctor?  An astronaut?  A writer?  A cowboy?  As children, we are asked this question over and over again.  Then, we get older and start asking ourselves the same question, "What do I want to be when I grow up?"  Many people go to college to answer the question.  There are plenty that go to institutes of higher education for years and still do not know.  There are vocational schools, branches of the military, and the ever brutal School of Hard Knocks.  Whether people go to the Ivy Leagues, the Big Leagues, the Big Game, or the Big House, different paths expose us to life, and we use these experience to make our choice.

I did not go to college.  It is a path in life that I should have made myself follow a long time ago.  People tell me I can go back to college, which is true.  But, I do not think at this age I want to go back to taking classes.  I would be able to buy beer and have my own place, "off campus," but I also would be telling everyone to leave by 9:00 p.m. because I have to get my daughters to bed.  Nothing shuts down a college party like the host having two kids, a husband, and laundry to fold.  

There is so much focus on the specifics, that it can seem that there can be no deviation from the plan.  You pick your school, pick your major, get that job, and continue life.  However, I do not know if even half the people I know who graduated from college are actually using the degree they earned.  Their degree does allow them to have opportunities they would not have had, and I would be lying to say that never made me jealous.  Jobs that their degree was not actually necessary to perform the required tasks.  Tasks I could have done without a degree, but jobs I never would have the chance to even prove I could do.  But, I did alright for myself.  I finished a vocational school and became a medical assistant when I was 30 years old.  When I stopped working ten years later to be a stay-at-home mom, I was managing a medical office and making more money than some of my friends with college degrees.  Finding myself at home somehow makes me start asking the question all over again.  If I could do things over again I would go the collegiate route.  I have no idea what my major would have been, but I would have gotten that degree.  If I could have a re-do AND know what I know now, I would have does things differently.  What I now see is that maybe we need to ask this question in a different way.   Instead of asking someone, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"  maybe we need to change it to, "How do you want to be when you grow up?"  People make decisions on their future usually revolving around the career they want after college.  At eighteen or nineteen, you may not be able to see past the projected income earnings or prestige a certain path will lead you towards.  What I have seen, is the sacrifice that comes along with some of these jobs.  You want to be a doctor?  Save lives, cure the sick, make lots of money, and be respected by the community?  Great!  Don't forget that sometimes your patients die, people will sue you for malpractice even when you've done nothing wrong, you have to work more hours than anyone you know, and you will miss more than half of all your children's extracurricular activities.  You want to be an archeologist?  Dig up some dinosaur bones, discover new fossils, live in a tent, and insist people call you Indiana Jones?  Fantastic!  Just realize you will probably never see your family, go weeks without showers or air conditioning, and all that time in remote places will probably assure you skin cancer or malaria.  I am not saying either of these professions are not admiral choices, but you have to go into them knowing what it is really going to mean for your life.

If there is something you want to do with your life, research the education that it needs, find out the true time commitments it will require, and speak to someone who lives the life.  Really talk to them and see if they are living a life you could be happy with yourself.  Just remember that if it is not what you hoped, start all over and try something new.  The movie, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," although a bit lengthy (166 minutes), has one of my favorite lines from a movie:

• I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.

What do you want to be when you grow up?  It's o.k. if you aren't quite sure.  What I can tell you is it really sucks that you cannot get paid for being happy.  If you could, I could retire early.

Birthday parties

Yesterday, my daughters and I attended the birthday party of my good friend, Kay's, daughter.  Her child is turning 8 years old.  My friend Cee has a daughter that is nine, and my girls are nine and seven (lots of girls in our group).  Between our four daughters and the other people, there was so much laughing, smiling, squealing, and joking around at the party...and that was just from the grown-up table.  When you are good friends with people for going on 28 years, you aren't just friends with them; you know their entire family and network of friends.  You know the embarrassing nicknames your friend's brother used to call her.  You know how she and her siblings still tease and torment their parents about things that were said during their childhood.  I always enjoy listening to the stories they tell about how family dinners would go ("Dad would tell us, 'Everybody just spill your goddamn milk now and get it over with!"), the inside jokes that still make them all laugh like it just happened yesterday, and how growing older has no bearing on the family dynamic:  you can joke around with each other, but you still respect mom and dad, don't hurt your sisters' feelings, and brothers are fair game.  I grew up in an almost identical home.  Mom and dad, me and my siblings, and usually a dog in the kitchen at dinner.  We usually were talking and laughing, sometimes there was crying and arguments, but we always did it while eating as a family.

The party yesterday was a success.  There were sloppy joes, chips and pretzels, fruit, veggies, cupcakes, and goody bags.  Kay's daughter got lots of fun presents.  The kids smiled for pictures.  Everyone sang, "Happy Birthday," and the birthday girl closed her eyes and made her wish as she blew out the candles.  I looked around at all the smiling faces focusing on her sweet face.  I found my daughters' sweet faces sitting around the table and smiled at how much fun they were having.  I was having fun, too.  You could feel the love in the room.  Friends, children, parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, a baby, and a dog...all together and emitting a love for each other that was as obvious as the smell of smoke from that extinguished candle.  After the cupcakes were devoured and the dishes started piling up in the sink, the guests started to leave.  People started putting on their coats.  Good byes and hugs were freely passed from person to person, and it is only the adults whom know the real gifts that were given that day.  Our children are surrounded by love.  Our children have a safe environment where they can explore and express themselves.  We are giving our children the blueprint of how to construct happy, supportive, solid relationships with family, friends, and the family of those friends. 

They say the best way to really learn about a person is to look at their family.  It does tell you so much about how they react to situations, how they show their support and their disapproval.  Yesterday was a day that confirmed many things for me:

1. My parents instilled some great values in me.
2. My friends' parents instilled most of the same values in them
3. Our kids are going to be fine.

Happy Birthday, sweet 8 year old girl.  I hope you wished for lifelong friends and unconditional love from your family.  That is a wish I know will come true.