Knowing that I can protect myself against the roaming vagrants in a post-nuclear event comforts me. And in that potential future, guns are more effective than bow and arrows or slings. Mind you, I don’t believe that I should keep a gun in the house. The peaceful little cul de sac that we live in does not necessitate the desire for family protection…and hidden guns are just a possible local news event featuring unhappy parents. We don’t even have the kids play with toy guns in the house. Correction: we don’t buy toy guns in our house, and the water guns acquired must stay in a special “for pool use only” bucket. However, I have a burning need to know what I think I ought. So, I have been trying to go to Project Appleseed for the last two years.
Project Appleseed is a nationally based program in which rifleman history and technique are taught to any who desire. Women and children are taught to sharp shoot a rifle at drastically reduced rates. I heard about this when my youngest child was too young to go….but I thought it was interesting for my own selfish reasons. But I was never able to tear myself away for the weekend. Nor could I seem to borrow a gun. I begged my Facebook friends for a rifle, and no one took me seriously. Or they took me too seriously, and still didn’t give me one.
This year was the year. I had a different, less selfish, motivation. Yeah had been displaying signs of being an academic underachiever. So I was in search of the perfect extrinsic motivator to jumpstart her nonexistent desires to do anything but read. Archery was a win from last month’s excursion….maybe sharp shooting would also reign in her need for perfection? This was a good bet. Plus the history lesson within would be a nice checkbox in her elementary transcript.
As stated, I didn’t have a rifle, and was nervous about having one around the house, so I worked with the local leader, and I begged for rifles to loan. I then practiced putting the babe on a carrier on my back for the times I got to lay on my belly to shoot. I decided to take my oldest, and I paid for Yeah and me.
The day before the event, we came down with the flu, or some other microbial infection. Yet again, life had intervened. I couldn’t envision both of us sick, in the cold and shooting. Yeah put it best: “Mommy, if you sneeze, you might shoot someone!”. Perhaps that was the best lesson for us both. Oh well, next year.