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So, after my 17 hour marathon rest I was moving stuff into the attic when my  brother came over.  He asked me about splitting a Father’s Day gift with him, I asked the cost, he told me and I told him where my wallet was to get the cash.  Later that day my dad came back and gave me a big hug thanking me for the Father’s Day gift.  Trying not to make it obvious that I had no idea what he got and knowing my brother’s penchant for firearms-as-gift I asked “What caliber is it?” He replied “.357 and that he’d “keep it under his pillow”.  Scanning over my knowledge of killings in the home and the strength of my father’s prescription glasses I realized Ryan had gotten my dad the greatest gift of all: Fratricide.

Editor’s Note: The technical term for killing one’s son would be filicide but it both sounds worse than fratricide and is a bit more remote from common parlance.  I hope it sufficiently conveyed the sense of terror at my father being armed while in a hynogogic state.

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My brother is growing up and buying his a house (with assistance) and I’m mourning/celebrating his imminent departure.  I looked around the house, joyed at the crap he’d take with him, especially the things that were my mother’s that he took over, like the curio for porcelain filled with shot glasses or stereo cabinet that nicely holds 3 rifles, 2 shotguns and enough ammo to stop a smallish epidemic of the Rage.  I hope he takes the television he destroyed innocently enough by repeatedly smashing helicopters into it during his “things that fly with blades spinning parallel to the floor” phase which was succeeded by his “things that fly with blades spinning perpendicular to the floor” phase.  The latter took up much room and our pool room is now a graveyard of Styrofoam and scale appropriate hack jobs or so I’m told.  I didn’t realize that when a plane’s tail falls off it’s reattached with a 18 inch wide piece of cellophane tape and girded with logs or what ever a scaled up bamboo skewer would be.

But the things I’ll miss the most are the odd periods of excitement/terror that accompanied my brother discovering some new problem or situation in the house that was best fixed by a large calibre handgun.  Today’s was “don’t be alarmed if you hear a loud bang *holds up revolver* but the pumpkin has to die”.  Little did I know that the proper tool to open a pumpkin to retrieve seeds was not a pearing knife but a Smith & Wesson.  Who knew?

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Troop 380 had Troop Leadership Training and the Scoutmaster Josh Reass didn’t show surprising no one.  The kids were a bit slow at first so I busted out the big guns: The Bugaloo song.  Nothing, these kids were dead.  Skip Davenport and Mike Shavel gave me a bit of an odd look as I screamed “would you like to scratch your balls!”  The kids became a bit less death-enwrapped during the afternoon when we did training training.  The kids quickly picked up the elements of avoiding gunfire but ran into trouble rolling over tables without exposing their head and confirming their positive outlook by yelling “I will survive” before starting to serpentine across an open field.  They were getting a bit tired and I had to stop after teaching them to duck-and-dash to avoid sniper fire in case of a public shooting.   Training was downhill from here as they got restless so by the end of the day I trusted the kids neither in the troop room nor in a firefight.  Completely worthless.

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Troop 380 had Troop Leadership Training and the Scoutmaster Josh Reass didn’t show surprising no one.  The kids were a bit slow at first so I busted out the big guns: The Bugaloo song.  Nothing, these kids were dead.  Skip Davenport and Mike Shavel gave me a bit of an odd look as I screamed “would you like to scratch your balls!”  The kids became a bit less death-enwrapped during the afternoon when we did training training.  The kids quickly picked up the elements of avoiding gunfire but ran into trouble rolling over tables without exposing their head and confirming their positive outlook by yelling “I will survive” before starting to serpentine across an open field.  They were getting a bit tired and I had to stop after teaching them to duck-and-dash to avoid sniper fire in case of a public shooting.   Training was downhill from here as they got restless so by the end of the day I trusted the kids neither in the troop room nor in a firefight.  Completely worthless.