The story starts out as a thumb thing. At some point in time when I was moving. .. perhaps when I was putting together my heavy iron bed, I injured my thumb. I thought it was a little sprain. It's my right thumb, and I have learned in the past month that you need your right thumb to do many things if you are right handed, which I am. I've learned that continuing to work out and lift weights multiple times a week might not be a good idea if you have a bad right thumb. Prevents healing, and all that.
So on Friday I went into my gym and told George the Trainer that for the next 2 weeks we would have to do exercises that completely stayed away from my thumb. He has known about the injury since it happened, and I had told him I would be the judge of whether or not a certain gym activity would further hurt it. However, my thumb was worse. Now I was leaving it up to him. I will miss my weights for a couple of weeks, but I need to get this thumb healed up.
Now to the second part of the story. I had a Saturday morning rehearsal at the Kennedy Center, so I drove up to DC on Friday afternoon. I had arranged to take Casey out to dinner for his birthday. His 30th birthday! Which is actually today. . . April 15th. A day for the rest of America that will live in infamy. Except for this year when April 17th is living in infamy. . . .but I digress.
I had called him and we decided that I would pick him up and drive him to Ford's Fish House in Ashburn, Va. where we would be joined by Chad and Sara. It had to be a late dinner to allow time for Chad to drive back from Maryland after his broadcast which ended at 7:00.
I had stopped in Charlottesville at the UVa Bookstore to pick up an external hard drive for my MacBook Air. My computer guy, David is cleaning up the computer and adding some software. As I was leaving the bookstore I got a call from Casey. It went something like this: "Mom, what time do you think you'll get up here?" Me: "I'm leaving Charlottesville now. So I'll be up there way before 7:30." Casey: "Well, I'm trying to decide what to do this afternoon since I left work early. I wanted to know if you want to do something with me. It's something that you said you wanted to try." Me: "And what would that be?" Casey: "Going to the shooting range. I want to try out my new gun."
Okay. . . background information needed here. But if your blood ran cold reading Casey's last sentence, then you have a good empathetic context for my position here.
I don't think I am alone in being a woman who abhors guns. It is possibly too sweeping a statement that all women outside Idaho, Montana and Wyoming hate guns. But lots of them do. And heck, maybe some women out in those states hate them as well. . . but I doubt it.
As a single mother of boys, I did not allow them to have guns. Of course they made guns out of everything. . . legos, sticks, bananas, fingers, Clyde the Dog's tail. But that did not deter me from forbidding any facsimile of a weapon inside the house. I was raising kinder, gentler men. It was my mission. Violence was not condoned in our house. I was raising Gandhi's. Of course I forgot to factor in that 50% of my boys' genetic structure was right-wing, NRA condoning, beer guzzling, profanity spewing, Neanderthal (must I go on?) protoplasm.
The first thing my sons did after leaving the nest was to arm themselves. Many times over. My two beautiful babies, the lights of my life, the Bert and Ernie of child-dom. . . . have morphed into "can't-own-too-many-guns-ists." They give each other Christmas and birthday gifts like: telescopic sights, silencers, heck I don't even know gun paraphernalia jargon!
I guess I can take heart in the fact that what they seem to like to do with these guns is (1.) own them, (2.) talk about them, (3) look at them, and (4) take them to the gun range and shoot them.
Over the past 10 years or so I have responded to this development by going from being apoplectic, to appalled, to uncomfortable, to resigned, to moderately accepting. Heck, I came from a childhood where we watched westerns on TV every single Saturday morning. Our heroes were Roy Rogers, The Lone Ranger, The Cisco Kid, Gene Autrey, Hopalong Cassidy! All of them armed! We kids owned holsters and cap guns and vests and cowboy hats, which our parents were only too happy to buy for us. We mimicked riding our horses fast and shooting behind us at the bad guys chasing us. Never mind that the lesson here is "Arm your kids to the hilt and they will never ever again want to touch a gun."
And here is the kicker, secretly I always thought that it would be fun to shoot at a target. So a while back when Casey said, "Mom, you should go to the shooting range with me," I'm sure I replied that I would like to. . . .some day. Hence the invitation on Friday.
So I get to Casey's house and I'm semi-excited-terrified about shooting. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em? He brings out a large backpack with all his shooting gear in it. ( I can't help but conjure up images of him in first grade wearing his first backpack off to school.) Also, he has his gun cases, wherein lie the dreaded weapons that heretofore I was unwilling to even look at. And off we went.
At the gun range I have to sign a bunch of stuff I don't read. I know. I know. I never read anything. We would have never been able to shoot by the time I got done. But I have told Casey about my thumb issue. And all the way to Northern Virginia the little voice in the back of my head has been saying, "You KNOW you shouldn't be shooting a gun if you want this thumb to heal." I know all about the kick-back that a handgun can cause ( I can't even believe I just wrote the word "handgun!"). I am pretty sure that somewhere in the great beyond Gandhi is frowning. So Casey tells me that he will rent me a 22 (I've heard of that) and that it will not kick back hardly at all.
So the guy at the range takes me to a glass case to "pick out" my gun. And he explains that once it is rented, I can come back and exchange it for any other 22 in the case. How accommodating!!!
So of course, I pick the only gun in the case that looks like Dale Evans might have used it. Heck, if it's good enough for a religious woman who can sing Happy Trails to You, then it's good enough for me. It's a revolver. . .not a 6 shooter but a 9 shooter. Somewhere up in the great beyond Dale Evans is smiling.
Next step is for me to get the "talk" from the monitor. Basically it is "Don't be shooting at the ceiling!!!" I take the pledge that shooting at the ceiling is the last thing I'm thinking about. We pick out our targets. . . I don't want anything that looks like a person, so I get circles with orange dots in the middle.
And in we go, donning our noise canceling earphones. We are the only ones in this particular range which has about 8 "booths" in it. This is not unlike bowling, actually.
Casey gets everything ready, loads my gun, reviews the rules, sets the target and then says: "Okay, Mom, go to it!" I pick up that Dale Evans Special and realize that Dale was a lot stronger than I ever gave her credit for! Never mind the bad thumb. It took BOTH thumbs to pull that trigger. Luckily I did not hit the ceiling on my first shot, but I'm not sure I hit the target either. Casey tells me it will be easier if I cock the gun first. I'm all in. I saw all my western heroes pull back that doohickey on top before firing. But even my good thumb can barely pull that thing back. How did Dale Evans do that? In a skirt? So at the end of the 9 shots, I request another gun. Casey offers to go get me one and returns with a semi-automatic in pink. Seriously?
Bottom line. . . I LOVED this gun. So much easier to shoot. Now I'm into it. But then people come in to fill the other booths, and start to fire guns much bigger than mine. Even with the earphones, it's like cannons going off. I can't believe how loud it is. Or the flashes of fire. Or the pieces of the fired bullets flying through the air. Casey's new gun is a biggy too, and it is borderline terrifying to be so close to the reality of the destruction these weapons are capable of. I find myself becoming more afraid of guns than ever, yet still enjoying the experience. Out of my comfort zone? I think so!
The good news is that my thumb never felt any ill effects from the shooting session. And I had quality time with my son. And it was fun. Will I do it again. Hmmmmmm. Actually. Probably.
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