So my wife and I are of course in Wal-Mart this evening picking up a few things before a bad winter storm is supposed to roll through.  Part of my purchase are three boxes of ammo.  It seemed like it took quite a long time to get through line but once I got to the cashier, I understood why.

We’ll just call him Michael (because that was his name).  You could tell he was a young man who was a little on the nerdy side, and one who didn’t get out much.  (I heard him tell the customer in front of us that his computer was “his solace”.  Anyway, Michael was a bit of a chatty Kathy and he had the long line to show for it.

So like I said, I pull up and tell him that I have three boxes of ammo waiting at the customer service desk (Wal-Mart sporting goods people take it to the front if you don’t buy it in the back of the store) and he somehow lets the Customer Service gal know through his keyboard so she can retrieve it.  As we’re waiting for her, Michael decided to tell me all about his first gun-shooting experience with his Dad and how he wasn’t ready for the noise or the kick-back and what not.  (As I looked at my wife to see her eyes rolling into the back of her head, we smiled at each other.)  Again… long line and it keeps getting longer.

The Customer Service gal finally gets there, we tell her where to retrieve the ammo, and then Michael proceeds to talk about his computer hunting experiences and how he enjoys aiming.  Then, the conversation between Michael and I went a little something like this:

Michael: “I’ve never been real hunting.  I don’t know if I could actually kill an animal or not.  I mean, I could probably shoot a deer because they’re kind of ugly.  I know that I couldn’t kill something cute like a kitty cat or anything like that.”

Me: (kicking up the best red-neck voice I can muster up) “Yeah… I can’t remember the last time I went “kitty cat” hunting Michael.”

I actually kept a pretty straight face through it all, but the wife and I had one fun ride home.  We kept laughing about “setting up my tree-stand by a sand pit”, and being able to tell when my prey was approaching because “I could hear the jingle bells.”  My wife had the best one though… she said, “I wonder what your call would sound like… MEOW! MEOW!”  BWAH! HA! HA! HA!

There may be a thousand ways to skin a cat, but you gotta shoot it first.  Cute or not. 

At age fourteen, young people think that they are ready to take on the world.  I can appreciate that, as I was once at that glorious age myself.  When rules are set down that there will be no physical touching at all for a fourteen year-old, they are going to be challenged.  That leaves parents at a cross-road… I can choose to be the “bad guy” standing my ground to protect my beloved offspring from things they don’t come close to comprehending or I can follow the advice of work friends who think I’m being too strict.  They tell me, “Kids are going to find a way to do it anyway, so you might as well educate them so they’ll make good decisions and chill out a little.”  I chose the hard path… not to be an authoritarian or an old “stick-in-the-mud”, but because I understand the fact that adolescents are not capable, for the most part, of making a good decision on their own.  Heck, I know some people over thirty years of age that aren’t capable of making a good decision!  There are some children who are exceptions, but even if they do have a good head on their shoulders, a good parent will be watching over their shoulder to make sure.  Why do I feel that they can’t make a good decision?  Simple really… they are running on limited knowledge and experience.  I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard an adult say, “Man, I wish I knew then what I know now!”  Am I saying that you should make all of your children’s decisions for them?  Nope.  Just with anything else in life, if you want to get good at something you must practice.  Have you kids practice, with your guidance, making great, educated decisions on a daily basis.  The key word in that last sentence is “guidance”.  Just as you wouldn’t hand the car keys to your fourteen year old and say “Figure it out for yourself,” you also shouldn’t set them out into the world expecting them to “figure out” relationships and interaction with the opposite sex.  Guide them.  It’s your job.  Sometimes that guidance requires you to keep your children from an environment where temptations could encourage them to make a poor decision.  And you won’t be popular, trust me!  I’ve always told my girls that “I won’t always be your best friend, but I will ALWAYS be your Daddy!”

Okay, so to the meat of the story…

I’ve set down a series of rules with the fourteen year-old about interactions with a boy.  Sometimes I even think they’re a little stern, but I’m going to stick to them.  No physical touch of any kind.  No holding  hands, no kissing, no hugging, no nothing.  If they behave themselves and make good decisions (under my guidance of course), then when she turns fifteen, I’ll think about letting them hold hands.

So one glorious Sunday morning I’m sitting in the balcony at church behind my daughter and her boyfriend.  The pastor had just delivered a wonderful, inspiring sermon just teeming with words straight from the Holy Spirit.  I was feeling great about life, my family, my church family and my relationship with God.  All was well… at least until the invitation time at the end of service.

Now don’t get me wrong here, I love my pastor.  I think he’s a great under-shepherd and he’s leading his congregation in the right direction.  But every once in awhile, all of us mess things up and we don’t even realize it.  My pastor, in his infinite wisdom, decides to deliver an illustration of how love can spread quickly if we allow it to.  One of his strengths in delivering a message is the use of a visual aid to REALLY make a point.  He’s a master at it.  So his illustration rules went like this:

• On the count of three, everyone in the sanctuary is supposed to “freeze like a statue” except for him.  You’re not allowed to move at all.
• He’s going to choose someone in the congregation to hug and tell them that he loves them.  By the act of hugging them, the chosen statue can “un-freeze”.
• This newly thawed congregation member can then choose someone themselves to “un-freeze”.

You kind of see where this is going, don’t you?  I’m there in the balcony, frozen, waiting for a little unfreezing love to come my way.  Problem is… my eyes were not frozen.  My eyes see this wave of thawing love and hugs cascading across the balcony like a tidal wave, but it’s not reaching me quicker than it was reaching my daughter’s boyfriend.  I see it reach him, and suddenly time started to slow down.  He thaws from a hug given by his neighbor.  I think, “WHERE IS MY HUG PEOPLE!!!  SOMEONE UN-FREEZE ME QUICKLY!!!”  I see him turn to my little girl.  My eyes are bouncing back-and-forth between them and the wave of thaw coming at me.  “HURRY UP PEOPLE!!!  UNFREEZE ME!!!”  He reaches his arms around her, and she thaws there in his arms.  The lady next to me hugs me and says “I love you my brother!” 

After the invitation was over and the pastor’s point was illustrated, well I might add, I asked my daughter and her boyfriend “You know you both just blew it.  You’ve set yourselves back a year!”  They both looked at me, smiling, and said, “Why?  Brother Roger told us to hug.”  Touché children, touché.

I’m trying to figure out a way to ground my pastor.  Any suggestions?

So today the girls and I go to Wal-Mart to purchase some “after Christmas, half-price” Stetson aftershave and cologne. I dig it. Not alot of people do, but it’s one of my things… especially at such a low-low cost. I stock up for the whole year.

So we go to check out after I proudly strutted through the store with my armful of gift Stetson, and there’s an elderly woman in one of the motorized carts in front of me. I only had a few items, but I thought to myself… “No big deal man… the little cart on that hot-rod doesn’t hold a bunch of stuff… you can wait for this sweet lady to finish her shopping.” I even motioned to Dawn to see if the lady needed any help, and she told Dawn she was fine. Dawn and I smiled.

She then proceeded to take each individual item out of the cart and had another store ad for everything… EVERYTHING!!!! The checker had to do a price change on everything she scanned. By the time we got three items into the experience, I looked behind me and there were about 10-15 people in line. The guy directly behind me shot a nervous smile at me. I jokingly said, “I’m not going to give her any trouble, because I know that’s going to be me someday.” We giggled.

So the checker managed to get through everything in her cart, which suprisingly does hold a lot, and I thought… “Okay Kenny… the ole patience has held out pretty well. Good job man!” And then the lady reached in her purse and pulled out coupons for EVERYTHING SHE HAD JUST PURCHASED!!! One by one, the coupons were scanned. Some coupons were contested but eventually fell in the lady’s favor. She had a few that needed to be verified by printing out an extra receipt that the checker could scan through because by now, even she forgot what the nice, beloved lady in the motorized cart had purchased. By now another lane had opened up and most of our line had filtered there, but this other fellow and I had ridden this ride for 15 minutes already, and we weren’t going to give up that easy!

Another checker came over to help get the lady’s purchased items back into the motorized cart as she began to pay for her items. All-in-all, she saved over $20 with her dilligent search for competitor ads and coupons, so I say good for her. (Jacquie Oermann would be so proud!) As the checker was finalizing the purchase, I noticed that the older lady was pulling off countless plastic bags from the checkout turnstyle and stuffing them into the cart while the checker wasn’t paying attention. She pulled so hard once that a whole section of bags came off, so she stuffed those in her cart too.

Now it probably would have been real easy to complain, roll my eyes or change lanes like the other pansies did… but not good ole patient Ken! I just smiled to myself and thought… “Oh yeah, this is going in the blog!”

I can’t wait to be old someday and do this myself. It looked like a real hoot!