![\"\"](\"https:\/\/feedingandrew.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Don-w-ducks.jpg\" "\\"Don")
<\/a>\n\tIve taken a better picture, but I don't think the ducks are very happy about this photo either!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Andrew likes guns.\u00a0 No, Andrew loves guns.\u00a0 He loves guns the way a man loves the idea of a woman.\u00a0 Not the reality of family life with a woman, but the romantic idealization that has immortalized many a siren in paintings or literature.\u00a0 He loves the way they look, the way they feel when cradled in his arms, even the mechanics of the way they come together and the parts that seem like they are just for show and esthetics.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t end there.<\/p>\n
Andrew loves to shoot guns.\u00a0 He likes the tension of pumping the action back and hearing the ammunition drop into place.\u00a0 He likes the way he can unlock the safety with one finger and the click of the trigger he is pulling back with another.\u00a0 A gun with a little real blowback sends a shiver down his spine and I\u2019ve seen his eyes glaze over in an almost religious ecstasy after popping off a round.<\/p>\n
With targets placed strategically on boxes or pedestals, he has spent hours on the side of the house shooting expertly past the unsuspecting tomato plants that he knows have a protected status around the house. \u00a0\u00a0Blind folded apples and oranges, on the other hand, are free game.<\/p>\n
This predilection for intermittent target practice and popping off rounds of ammo is not one I share with my son. In fact, his preternatural understanding and love for weapons is something that used to scare me like a 4 am sale on Black Friday:\u00a0 I just knew that nothing good could ever come of it!<\/p>\n
As a dad with more than his share of childhood development under my belt, I rationalized the drive for guns through the lens of modern psychology and stages of growth.\u00a0 However, Andrew spent many of his foundational years on the meanest streets in Los Angeles and his neighbors had real guns that they played with.\u00a0 Secretly, I feared that his love of guns was less Freudian and more preparation for taking over the house in his teenage years.\u00a0\u00a0 Still, I decided that psychology was my best weapon and. that like most things kids want, putting up a fight would only create more desire.<\/p>\n
I would let him play with toy guns and \u201cget it out of his system.\u201d<\/p>\n
It turns out that Nerf Guns are the gateway drug of the gun world.\u00a0 Oh sure, they say that a little marijuana won\u2019t hurt and then \u201cBAM\u201d you are living in a tent on skid row with a crack addition the size of Texas.\u00a0 I now believe that Mattel is a secret branch of the NRA: The National Rifle Addiction\u2026\u00a0 I mean association.<\/p>\n
This is how it goes.\u00a0 Nerf turns into high-powered water guns.\u00a0 Water guns turn into laser tag.\u00a0 Lasers turn into paint ball and then finally, you have the Airsoft gun. \u00a0It\u2019s the Holy Grail of the toy gun world and just shy of being the real deal. In fact, these guns are so close to the real thing that laws are in place that require a very bright orange end piece to make sure that Law enforcement doesn\u2019t\u2019 shoot first and ask question later.<\/p>\n
Understandably, I was just a wee hesitant when Andrew asked for one for his birthday.\u00a0\u00a0 Obviously, I said, \u201cNO!\u201d with a big emphasis on the \u201cNO!\u201d<\/p>\n
Then secretly I got on the Internet to see what all the fuss was about.\u00a0 Just the price tag alone was enough to scare me, but all the gear that went with it made the sites seem more like a weapon pornography site for Idaho compounds (no slight intended for my gun slinging relatives living in Boise).\u00a0 This was real \u201cget ready for Armageddon\u201d style gear.<\/p>\n
I had all the ammo I needed and my resolve was set.<\/p>\n
Then Andrew looked at my Internet history and with that \u201cI know what you\u2019re getting me for my birthday\u201d grin asked me what I was doing looking at Airsoft sites.<\/p>\n
\u201cResearch.\u201d I told him and then before I could figure out how it happened, Andrew and I had spent an afternoon sitting on my bed doing more \u201cresearch.\u201d\u00a0 By the time we finished, I knew who the best manufactures were, what the air speed of different models meant, and even where kids went to have Airsoft birthday parties.\u00a0 It turns out that you\u2019re supposed to gather in big groups and shoot at each other.<\/p>\n
They call this fun.<\/p>\n
I knew where this was all leading and there\u2019s no sense keeping you in suspense.\u00a0 I purchased a gun over the Internet and sent out the invitations for Andrew\u2019s friends to celebrate his birth by shooting each other in some warehouse in East Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
To my surprise all the parents said yes. \u00a0Perhaps sending your teenage son to be shot at all day was an acceptable term for a day without Hip Hop blaring around the house.<\/p>\n
Even more to my surprise was the realization that this was the first real birthday party that Andrew would have since he came to live with me.\u00a0 Of course, I had celebrated his birthdays, but he had never really had a large enough social group of his own until now and it typically meant we celebrated with family and perhaps his one childhood friend he kept in touch with.<\/p>\n
Andrew\u2019s group of high school friends are all good athletes, straight A students, and genuinely kind and caring boys.\u00a0 They are a testament of the amazing growth that Andrew has made in a few short years and the kind of young man he has become.<\/p>\n
If they want to shoot each other, then so be it.\u00a0 \u00a0The party was a success and the car chatter coming home that night warmed my heart.\u00a0 Andrew was beaming and later that night after the lights were dimmed and I was lying in bed with a book, Andrew came into my room to say good night.<\/p>\n
Sitting at the edge of the mattress he had one more piece of ammo ready to shoot straight into my heart, \u201cHey Dad, thank you for an amazing birthday.\u00a0 It\u2019s the best birthday I\u2019ve ever had.\u00a0 I mean that.\u00a0 It really was the best.\u00a0 You\u2019re an amazing dad and I love you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, there it was in a bullet shell.\u00a0\u00a0 This was not the teenage boy trying to persuade me to do something he wanted, but a sincere appreciation for me trying to bend and grow with him as he figures out who he is and where his passions will lead him.<\/p>\n
For now one of his passions is for guns and marksmanship.\u00a0\u00a0 There will be others.\u00a0 Some I will understand, some I won\u2019t.<\/p>\n
As I inch my way towards my 50th<\/sup> birthday this year, I even think Andrew may be on to something for my next party, because every time I get another notice from AARP that I can soon join, I think to myself \u201cHappy Birthday, Now Shoot me!\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Seared Duck in a Green Peppercorn Sauce<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n Duck in a Green Peppercorn Sauce<\/strong><\/p>\n My sister called me up a few days before Christmas and told me that her friends had gone hunting and had a bag of Pintails waiting for me.\u00a0 It turns out that they love to hunt duck, but don\u2019t love to eat them.\u00a0 They heard that Andrew and I do love to eat duck, so here I am, lucky me, with a surprise gift of seven not so lucky ducks.\u00a0 Of course, I\u2019m used to a more prepackaged variety, but I was more than willing to make sure these ducks didn\u2019t die in vain.<\/p>\n It had been 35 years or so since I plucked and gutted a chicken, but I was sure that it was like riding a bicycle and decided to hop right into it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In fact, it was a lot like getting back onto a bicycle after many years; that is, if you got on the bike after 30 years and decided to ride for five or six hours in 20-degree weather, without gloves, knowing that at the end of the ride you had to stick your hand into the inside of a dead animal and remove all of its guts!<\/p>\n Okay, so I need a different analogy.<\/p>\n The plucking was actually not so bad, but it took forever.\u00a0 I\u2019d give instructions on how to accomplish this, but I know that most everyone reading this will never attempt it.\u00a0 If you do, drop me a line and I\u2019ll be happy to walk you through it step by step.\u00a0 I\u2019m also going to pass over the gutting part in deference to my more squeamish reader – namely my sister.<\/p>\n<\/a>\n\t