The Marksman’s Tale

One kill.  That is the sniper’s creed.  Such a marksman neither of my children be.  How do I know this much to be the truth?  It is I who clean the toilets within our two prince court.  Like a fire hose without the fireman’s trained hand, I presume the scene to be something akin to the spray from an angry surf.  Only those of you that have raised young men will understand my pain.  Even though our toilets are foreign and don’t flush quite the same, the process is fairly simple, yet the urine still remains.  I wager that if they could control their manhood and the knob on the toilet with a play station controller, my life would be much less tragic.  Perhaps in the end I have struck on a potty training aid for the computer age.  Place the potty chair in front of a playstation move or xbox Kinect . . . well you get the picture.  Or maybe we could place pressure sensitive targets in the bottom of the toilet with a video screen on the back and turn the process into a first person shooter.  We could call it Call of Nature instead of Call of Duty.  Yellow Ops maybe?  Just brainstorming.  Of course you couldn’t register your high score online unless you pushed the “flush” button.  I believe this idea to be every bit as good as the pet rock.  “ You see, that is what you have to do . . . use your mind to come up with a really great idea like that “  “You think the pet rock was a great idea?”  “Sure, the guy made a million dollars”.  CLUTCH FILM.

And so it goes with my life . . . constant maintenance.  Maintaining the home while maintaining my sanity.  Both are a full time job.  In the past year I have seen my life transformed.  From attorney to nursemaid and somehow further still.  I have found my place in the world.  I have endeavored to become the person I promised myself to be.  A poet, a painter, a sinner and a saint.  I have contemplated the world and come to a rash conclusion or two.  I have seen things I would have never imagined and taken stock in the wonders of the world.  If I never manage to teach my children to flush the toilet, it will simply be a battle lost in a winning war.  I have shared with them my strengths and my weaknesses.  I have given them a window into my soul through which they can see their future.  A transparency that they may not appreciate now, but one that I hope will serve them well when they take their first awkward steps into manhood.   Be bold, be adventurous.  Live life without boundaries and never take stock in the words “I can’t”.  Look at the world from outside of the box and dream as though you will never wake.  Perhaps this is the prelude to my year in review.  A beginning to the end.  This has been my story and continues to be our adventure.  And when I look in the mirror in the morning, what is it that I see?  A man with a lot to learn and a story to tell.  The story I have told contains all that I have learned.  The story yet to come will be filled with those things I have yet to conquer.  I began writing this as a gift to my young sons to help remember a time that might not stand out so clearly in their minds once they are my age.  What I know now is that what I have given them is much more profound.  What I have given them is my wish for what they someday will become.  I fear I may be too old to finish the journey myself, but perhaps the start that I have given them will see them through to the end. 

In contemplating this wish I have for them, I am reminded of the words of Aristotle:

“Every systematic science, the humblest and the noblest alike, seems to admit of two distinct kinds of proficiency;  one of which may be properly called scientific knowledge of the subject, while the other is a kind of educational acquaintance with it.  For an educated man should be able to form a fair off-hand judgment as to the goodness or badness of the method used by a professor in his exposition.  To be educated is in fact to be able to do this; and even the man of universal education we deem to be such in virtue of his having this ability.  It will, however, of course, be understood that we only ascribe universal education to one who in his own individual person is thus critical in all or nearly all branches of knowledge, and not to the one who has a like ability merely in some special subject.  For it is possible for a man to have this competence in some one branch of knowledge without having it in all"
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 From:  On The Parts of Animals

It is this thrist for understanding and a never ending desire to be a truly Renaissance man that drives me, and I hope it is the one thing they (my sons) will remember me for . . . I think I will learn to play the guitar.  R.