PJ: The Right to Do as You Damn Well Please, and the Duty to Take the Consequences

Aging in the time of Republican Reptiles …

There was a time when fast cars, loud guns and hot women were a thing for me. I was a lot younger then.

A while back I was thinking about the reason I never drive anywhere in any sort of significant excess of the posted speed limit. I realized I do this for two reasons.

The first being I’m just not in that much of a hurry anymore. There’s nothing in my life that the few seconds I save by going 20+ miles per hour over the speed limit makes any real difference.

The second is that I absolutely hate being pulled over by cops. I know, I know, they’re there to protect us and speeding isn’t a capital offense but … My heart sinks somewhere down in the vicinity of my bowels and goes to maximum beats per minute when I look in the rearview mirror and see flashing red lights. So I haven’t been pulled over by a cop for anything I did wrong in almost 30 years. Notice the qualifier there, I have been pulled over by cops in that time frame, but not because of anything that I did to violate traffic or vehicle laws. I have control over my own driving and vehicle, I do not have control over what a police officer perceives as his duty.

What’s maybe a little peculiar about my sedate driving attitude is I’m an expert driver with tons of experience most people never get. My Dad raced stock cars as a hobby and taught me high performance driving. I have been through some of the better courses on escape and evasion driving. I even drove a semi-truck for a while and logged about a half million miles doing that. I can do things with a vehicle the most people only ever see in movies and … I don’t care to do those things anymore. They scare the crap out of me because unlike the carefully crafted stunts you see in the movies, I have first hand personal knowledge of how ridiculously dangerous that kind of thing is.

(That’s ‘unacceptable risk”. I’ll never again strap a parachute harness on for any reason. What you see in movies or at an airshow is highly controlled with every possible consideration made for safety. Jumping from a properly functioning aircraft for purposes of getting from the air to the ground in an uncontrolled, unstable environment is not the same thing at all. Contrary to popular myth when a parachute fails completely you don’t die of fright and a heart attack before the deck gives you your final kiss. And you bounce.)

Loud guns used to be a real hoot for me. I hunted when I was young (and still do but not as much by a long shot. Pun intended.) My Dad served in the Army in Korea and taught me how to shoot both the “civilian way” and the “military way”. No, they’re not the same thing. So when I enlisted in the Marine Corps I was already very handy with things that go “bang”. Then I got even handier. I never failed to qualify “Expert” with anything.

That’s not bragging, I had a serious advantage over the guys who came from cities and towns and the qual’s simply showed that advantage. 95% of the guys standing on either side of me in Boot Camp had never handled a firearm and the other 5% didn’t realize there was a right and wrong way to do that. They were doing it the wrong way and breaking them of those bad habits made them less, not better, weapons users.

Because of that time in service and subsequent situations a firearm was at times a tool of my trade and the literal preserver of my life. I took that very seriously and not the least because I loved firearms. I enjoyed being serious about guns. I learned everything I could from every source I was able to find. I was taught by some of the best and studied literature and media materials when I wasn’t being personally instructed. I became an instructor myself. I practiced and practiced and practiced. I loaded my own ammo. I drove my neighbors nuts firing on my own personal range. I got pretty good with a gun too and that’s not an empty boast. After a few tens of thousands of rounds (possibly more) expended if you’re not good, you really ought to find something else to do.

These days I don’t shoot much. Because of circumstances of duty where hearing protection isn’t a good idea I have a significant high range hearing loss from all the loud guns and other things that went “bang”. (There are places and situations where you just don’t wear ear plugs.) I can’t hear birds sing anymore and there is a permanent ringing in my ears that I’ve just had to learn to ignore.

Hot women are another matter entirely. Not in the way you might think. A good portion of my younger days I had to always bear in mind that a hot woman that took an interest in me might have a concealed agenda so … I was pretty “hard to get”. That suited me fine and came both easy and naturally because I was never a ladies man. It wasn’t until later in life when I got serious enough about the opposite sex to consider anything of any permanence.

Oh, there were a few ‘hot women’, don’t get me wrong. For quite a while I dated a model who was drop dead gorgeous. She was unique for that sort of gal in that she never used her amazing looks to manipulate and was a genuinely good person who I thought very highly of. Looking back in later years I regretted not pursuing that situation more earnestly. Today that lady is a Mom of several children, the wife of farmer in Indiana and has lived a happy, satisfying life. If I’m honest about it she’s probably better off and has lived a better life than she would have had with me.

After many years of consideration and two divorces I’ve come to the conclusion that there are people who should never marry. I’m one of them. Honor precludes ever abusing a woman or cheating on a spouse, those were never problems. All I’ll say is that being married to me wasn’t “good” for either of those women and I regret taking up a portion of their lives when they probably should have been looking for happiness somewhere else. For you people who’ve been happily married for decades, I envy you but that appears never to have been in the cards for me. As it stands, there’s no room in my life for that kind of relationship now and that has turned out to be just as well.

Now I’m more than content with fishing, good bourbon and decent cigars. I’ve lived some adventures that most of you wouldn’t even believe if I told you and I wouldn’t blame you for your disbelief. I can scarcely believe it myself. It astonishes me on a daily basis that I’m still alive. Every night I thank God for allowing me to live out whatever remains of my life in peace, quiet and security with minimal hassels. I’m grateful both for that and for Him loving me enough to grant me some peace here on the downhill side. Lord knows, literally, that I don’t deserve it.

Still … You only get one, limited duration life so you might as well live it in whatever manner you deem fittest — Without searing your conscience and damning your soul. I’m not saying now and never have said “If it feels good do it” or “Eat, drink and be merry”, there are far deeper satisfactions in a lived life than those shallow philosophies.

Finally — Adventures are things best experienced years later in a warm, safe, comfortable place with good friends, good cigars and great whiskey. When you’re actually living through them … Not so much.