What Happens When Kids Don't Listen Pt. 1

As a rule, children do not listen.

Generally, more butt warmings have occurred when children have not listened than when they have tortured small animals, stolen cars or attempted to immolate themselves. Adults, you see, are not devoid of emotion. The aft mentioned misdemeanors imply something is wrong with a child, and that wrong requires more help than a parent alone can offer.

Unless one is born deaf, however, every child with two ears affixed to its head can hear and comprehend. The fact that they do so selectively drives parents, even the best of us, to temporarily lose control and bear no responsibility for our actions.

Usually, children listen to men more than women. As a rule, men are more violent, and as they have never carried another living being in their bodies (save parasites), men are fuzzy when it comes to the idea that striking that which annoys you is a bad idea if it is your own. Just the opposite. Striking that which annoys you, for me, is the safest release possible, provided it is your own. No self respecting man kicks a dog. No self respecting man owns a dog that would shy from retaliation if kicked. Children, on the other hand, are fair game. If they do not listen.

Most adult headaches are derived from children who do not listen.

“Do not go near those geese,” I answered my children when they requested to go outside and play. I live in a suburban area that is really a lot of undeveloped farmland left over by bankrupt developers. Suburbs have hubs of retail and business activity. I have grass, lots of it, and the kind of animals that keep vermin in check through natural, predatory selection. I live not in a suburb but in moderately civilized woods, dotted by libraries, restaurants, and fields like the one across the street from my house.

“So, we can go?” my son asked.

“Leave those geese alone,” I repeated, then went back to my drink and tattered copy of Pudd’nhead Wilson.

They said “Okay” and left, to join their friends. I went back to reading.

In America, a man, or a woman, can do what they please in their own home, and have little explaining or justifying to do. When you leave your home, however, everyone else takes your affair to be their affair.

So a man like me can sit back, have a cocktail, smoke a cigar and relax in an old pair of suit pants and a t-shirt. Reading Twain and every now and then remembering he has to clean the old M1911 left he inherited. Nobody cares. Outside of the home? Alcohol, firearms and tobacco combined make for a federal law enforcement agency. Regardless of what you are reading.

I was almost done with Puddn’head when I heard kids screaming. You have kids, you hear screams. They are all loud, but they differ. Some screams are screams of excitement. Some are “Please let the neighbors hear how loud you’re whooping me so you stop.”

Some are screams of terror.

Fathers really have one job: protection. That whole providing thing falls under protection. You go out and get a job so your wife doesn’t have to enter the sex industry and your kids aren’t hired out to assemble sneakers just to eat. Society usually looks the other way if a father has to do something incredible stupid if it can legitimately be filed under “protecting my family.” Usually.

I heard the screams again. I looked through my sliding door and saw my daughter running pell mell towards the house, followed by her older brother and friends, who were stopping and throwing things.

I groaned, hauled myself out of my chair and started out the door. Usually a big man in a t-shirt is enough to scare neighborhood teens.

I grabbed the Colt just because it was there.

“What the hell?” I bellowed as I strode outside, barefoot, crunching over asphalt and onto the grass. The kids kept running. I was glowering.

“What’s with all of this noise? Can’t you see I’m trying to…”

What? Drink? Can’t say that one, I thought.

My daughter ran into me, bounced off and pointed.

Then I heard the honking.

About seven birds were racing across the field, basically in pursuit of the kids.

Great. Geese are mean. They are also protective. These kids probably just got too close to their babies…natural instinct.

Logic, however, does not prevail when my children are being threatened. If the goose daddy’s way of protecting his young is to attack mine, well, life isn’t fair.

“Get down!” I hollered.

A shot in the air? That’s good sense. Geese are mean but they have a bad history with armed humans. Geese are edible, and they know it.

The kids didn’t listen. They ran for me, and the geese changed tracks, honking, flapping and defecating all the while.

Something I heard in a sermon once came back to me. Geese are really supportive of each other, but the guy in the front? He’s the lead.

The kids ran past me. So much for loyalty. I reached in my pocket, unlatched the safety, pulled back the slide and took aim.

The leader became a puff of feathers. I took aim again, hollering for the kids to get in the house, and watched the big shell turn another goose into so much protoplasm.

Geese are tough. Geese have loyalty. Geese, like everything else, fear disintegration.

“Daddy! Stop it! You’re killing them!” She was beating her little hands across my thigh.

I made sure the other geese had scattered, ejected the magazine, grabbed her by her waist and ran into the house.

The other kids were seated in my living room, looking out the window. The little girls looked at me in horror. My son’s friends looked on in envy.

I went upstairs and locked the big, flat pistol back in its case. Maybe it didn’t need much cleaning after all.

When I got downstairs, two of my daughter’s friends were crying. The boys were trying to get back outside to see what, if anything, remained of their would be attackers.

“Didn’t I tell you all not to bother those geese?”

“You did?”

“I did. Right before you went outside.”

There was a knock at the door. There were flashing lights outside.

I knew the cop at the door. He was one of my night students.

“Hey, Doc, we got word of some shots in the area? Could be kids setting off fireworks…”

“No, it was me,” I said.

“Um…”

“Kids were in the field. Got chased by geese. Birds wouldn’t let up and came close to getting them. I fired to keep the kids from being attacked.”

He nodded. “They’re meaner than ever this time of year. Them and the raccoons. Nasty bites. Um, can I come in?”

I gestured inside. He left his cruiser idling in my driveway.

“Hold up a minute,” I said. I went upstairs, grabbed the gun case and my registration permit.

“Weapon in question,” I said, handing him the case. He opened it and whistled softly.

“Not gonna leave much goose, izzit?”

“Don’t know. Trying to get the kids in the house. I told them to leave the geese alone. Figure they stumbled on a nest and poked at the babies.”

He closed the case, made some notes from my permit, and gave them both back to me.

“There’s no crime here,” he said. “I’d clean that piece, though.”

“I will. Thanks for stopping by.”

“Animal control will get the body, but you know what? Local animals will get to it first. I’d leave the kids in for a day or two, or at least out of the field, or they may run across something not as slow as a goose and twice as hungry.”

“Thanks again.”

He left. I walked outside and waved as he got in his car.

The kids drifted home, one by one, and I made supper. We ate, watched TV, and otherwise had an uneventful night.

When I stepped out to get my paper in the morning, all was quiet. I made coffee and scanned the headlines.

“Local Thug Murders Innocent Wildlife”.

There was a picture of me waving. Looking like a Black Tony Soprano in my t-shirt and old dress pants. Who took that damn picture?

“A local man bent on changing our ecology murdered two geese in cold blood yesterday, police reports show. This man,” well, they spelled my name right, I grimaced, “fired on innocent geese yesterday afternoon. The birds were nesting in the field across from his home when he went on a rampage, killing two of the animals with an assault rifle. Animal activists have complained to the county, which owns the field where the geese both lived and were assassinated, to press charges. Gun control advocates are pushing for a ban on the Teflon coated “Chainsaw” ammunition experts claimed the man used on the innocent, unsuspecting fowl. The shells reportedly decapitated the birds and incinerated them whole in a matter of seconds. Area police have investigated and made it clear the use of assault rifles on unarmed birds is unsporting...”

This is what happens when kids do not listen.

I called the police station and asked for the chief, a neighbor. Where had he been last night? Probably sitting in his favorite chair enjoying a drink and reading. His kids probably listened.

“Hey Doc, you’re famous!”

“Joe? What the hell? Very little in that article is factual.”

“Oh, Doc, it’s a newspaper. They never get it right, first go round.”

“Joe? I don’t own a freaking assault rifle.”

“Shoot, I read the report Matthews took. Old .45 automatic. Two shells spent. Hell that “chainsaw” ammunition don’t even exist, in real life. Trust me, if it did, we’d have some here. Bet your shell didn’t leave much bird, though.”

“Am I going to be arrested?”

“For what? Some animals attacked your kids. You put a stop to it. Your weapon is registered and licensed. You were doing your job. Take it in stride.”

“This paints me to be some type of…organized crime figure with a yen for killing animals.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Doc. This’ll all blow over in a day or so. The papers do this whenever there is a slow news day. They’ll print a retraction somewhere over the next month, in back by the classifieds for Oriental massages. We’ll all have a good laugh. ‘Local Professor is Not a Thug’. Priceless!”

I sighed.

“A word of advice, Doc? Whatever you do? Don’t push it. This is like a bug bite. Ignore it, it goes away. Push it, it gets ugly.”