Control

            I went to high school from September 1977 to June 1980.  Few of my fellow students had their own cars but those that did, using the limited funds of the offspring of middle class parents, usually had something that was more that a few years old.  Say late 60’s through the early 70’s.  Unless it was a VW, most of those cars had big engines, with more horsepower than Tommy Lasorda’s Rascal scooter.  Combine that power with a heavy front end and a relatively light rear end and you get cars that were pretty much built to peal out.  I remember one guy who would pour bleach on his back wheel and then when he took off the squealing tire would make the cleanest white smoke you ever saw.

            One day some city workers put what looked like a mixture of oil, broken asphalt, Cracker Jack, and floor sweepings on Clinton Avenue, which is the southern border of the school.  I kid I knew pulled his car out of the parking lot and as he drove away fishtailed across the yellow line and connected with the front end of a car coming the other way.  It likely wasn’t his lead foot that caused the accident but rather his inexperience with the road conditions.  The kid had to stand in the middle of the street, explaining to the police that he wasn’t drag racing or showing off while likely half of the school populations walked by on their way home.

            The next day I read about his accident in the paper.  All I really remember is something about too much speed and a slippery road causing him to “lose control” of his car resulting in the accident.  I might be wrong on the timing but I think that within a couple of days and elderly woman drove her car over the curb and up one of those guy wires that they have on utility poles, where it stuck.  That newspaper article said that the senior citizen’s car “went out of control” hitting the wire and climbing it.

            I thought then, and I think now, that it’s interesting that when a teenager gets in an accident he “loses control” but when an elderly woman does it, her cars “goes out of control” as if the car grew a mind of its own and decided to try a little tightrope driving.

            My son Robbie is 16 and while he has shown little interest in getting his license, it’s only a matter of time.  I’m okay with it now because I think most of the people out there are lousy drivers, including me, and I’m not really ready to throw my first born to those inattentive wolves.  Yes, I’m a lousy driver but a better motorist because I know I’m a lousy driver.  That's my thinking anyway.  It’s the guy who thinks he drives like Morgan Freeman (in Driving with Miss Daisy, not in real life) when he really drives like the rest of us who is the real danger.  Plus some actuary somewhere has already bought into the teenager’s who can’t control their cars school of thought and calculated about how much my insurance will go up when he does start driving.

            I pledge never to tell Robbie about the bleach/tire thing.

Whatever Power

...you need a bullet like a hole in the head...
                         Put Out the Fire - Queen

         

            Last weekend was the six month anniversary of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut.  I won’t go into the details; we all know them and if you don’t, consider yourself fortunate.  A couple of days later President Obama said he would use "whatever power this office holds" to prevent similar tragedies in the future.  At this six month point what has been done?  An assault weapons ban went nowhere, a bill to expand background checks died in the Senate, and the gun control bill that did pass in New York 5 months ago has been challenged in court and will likely be repealed.  I guess the power that the Office of the President holds amounts to very little.

            You stand over here and way over there a can flips off a fence post or a tight grouping of holes appear in the center of a target.  Shooting guns is fun, but so is driving a car 100MPH through a shopping mall – the Blues Brothers proved that –  that doesn’t mean we should do it. 

             The power of the pro-gun lobby, Second Amendment advocates, and the “from my cold dead hands” posse is like hurricane wind, dashing, demolishing, and blowing away like so many mobile homes even the smallest and most reasonable suggestion that perhaps we should look at limiting firearms in hopes that another group of innocent people don’t find themselves huddled in the corner of a classroom, movie theater, or “insert next mass shooting location here” powerlessly waiting their turn to die violently.  The say to put armed guards at our elementary schools but would that not be the first person in the crosshairs of the next guy who comes to the realization that all his life’s problems will be solved if he can just go shoot some of people.  NRA spokesman Wayne LaPierre said about the hunt for the Boston Marathon bombers, “How many Bostonians wished they had a gun two weeks ago?"  Well guess what Wayne, the people of Boston didn’t need a gun because the police pulled out every stop, left no stone unturned, found the younger brother of the bombing duo and not another soul was harmed.  Now that’s how you use “whatever power” you hold to get the job done.

           Since the shooting I have seen blogs, Facebook posts, and heard statements from the leaders of firearms rights groups suggesting the President wants to take away our guns, trample the Constitution, and generally bring about a gun-less Armageddon where we’ll all be enslaved by the United Nations and forced to eat éclairs instead of doughnuts and drink French wine instead of Budweiser.  Right after the shooting there were blogs and Facebook posts asking that we pray for the lives lost that day.  The latter stopped showing up after about a week.  When did the former stop?  I’ll let you know…

            I need to apologize here.  I apologize to the children of Sandy Hook, the movie patrons of Aurora, Colorado, the onlookers at a Congresswoman’s meeting in Arizona, but mostly to the victims of the next shooting because I did nothing too.  I marched lockstep with Congress and our President as they said that this time it would be different when they, and I, knew it wouldn’t.  More children, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers will die and die horribly and we’ll wring our hands, pound our pulpits, and return to our regular scheduled programming having done nothing.  Again.