In a previous post I mentioned getting Charity a special something for Christmas. I got it for her last year, but we didn't think she was old enough. She just turned 3 and she's smart enough to start learning. Santa left her new toy (among many others) under the tree. Here's Charity showing it off. (Please note the pleasant dichotomy between her oh-so-girly lounge wear and the new object of her affection)
At first she didn't know what it was. When we told her, she didn't really know what to make of it. See, she hasn't really seen my guns, so she's really not sure what they do or why they're fun. I started by showing her how to hold it, how the bolt works, and what the trigger does (along with very stern directions on where not to point it).
She didn't seem too thrilled until she pulled the trigger for the first time and it made a reasonably loud, though very poor, imitation of the sound of a gun being fired. She is sometimes frightened by loud sounds, so we worried that the noise it made would turn her off to it. We were idiots. At the sound of the first firing, she lit up and got really excited to handle it and work the bolt and pull the trigger. After a few minutes she told us, very matter-of-factly, "I'm going to go shoot some targets. I will be back in a while."
Needless to say, if my heart weren't made of frozen granite, I would have wept. I'll be honest; I'm not thrilled that she was excited about having a gun of her own, or even having fun handling a gun. I was thrilled that she was excited about something Daddy loves. For example, assume I were an avid fisherman (though I've never before caught an avid), or a stamp collector, or reality show junkie. I would be thrilled that she got, respectively, her first fishing rod, stamp album, or lobotomy.
I don't have a lot of memories from when I was a kid, and most of the things I remember are bad. Not that I had a bad childhood or anything. It's just that for some reason, most of the memories that my brain has chosen to store are unpleasant ones. I guess it's just the way I'm wired. Some of the few happy memories I have are of my Dad and I going shooting together. It was fun for me because I got to be with my Dad and shoot guns. How cool is that! I'm guessing that a lot of the fun for Dad was getting to nurture in his son the love of something that was important to him. That's the way I am, too. That's part of the reason I'm so happy that Charity is so fond of books; it's something I love and that is important to me. Sharing that with her is kind of a special bond that ties us together. I hope that someday it's the same with shooting.
What if she grows up with no interest in shooting? Will I be disappointed? Honestly, yes. For the same reason you would be disappointed if your long-planned trip to Disneyland got canceled at the last minute. It's something you've been looking forward to for a long time, and now it's not going to happen. But she's my daughter, and if she chooses fishing, or stamp collecting, or... not that other thing... I'll be okay with that. I will do my best to love those things right along with her, unless it's that other thing, in which case she's pretty much on her own. It would be fun to learn to do something new together. I will love her no matter what.
Ah see, now I'm getting all mushy. Stupid emotions.
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