Please Don't Pee In The Gene Pool

Since my daughter announced that she was getting married in the not too distant future, I have been under orders to get my guitar fingers back into shape after a long hiatus; the better part of a fifteen year long hiatus. My instrument of choice is the acoustic twelve string, but, since my poor, arthritic digits have trouble dealing with such a beast after so long a time, I've been using a cheapo electric six that I bought for that very purpose. I takes very little pressure to depress the strings (I make it up to them later and they feel so much better) and it's a lot lighter and easier to cart around than the twelve.

So early one morning as I sipped coffee at my mothers house, waiting for the heater man (or someone like him) to arrive and service the heater, I sat plunking my electric while half paying attention to the morning news. (Yes, I am the king of multitasking and proud of it.) An item on the news grabbed my attention and I put my guitar down to listen as the information being imparted served to reinforce my belief that people, in general, when left to their own devices, are capable of flashes of inspirational stupidity. I am quite certain that the news anchor relaying the report was in complete accordance with me on that particular bit of philosophy; the ear to ear grin on his face was a dead give away.

The story told was of a man somewhere, I didn't catch where and it really doesn't matter as there are people everywhere and, therefore, there is potential stupidity everywhere, a man who had a bit of trouble while cleaning a gun. It seems that this genius failed to check the gun for live rounds before starting to clean the firearm resulting in what the law enforcement powers that be delight in calling; "A self inflicted gunshot wound." I fear that this, no doubt, will give the rabid gun control terriers a metaphorical soup bone to savage, and I apologize to my fellow NRA members for saying this but, there are even some gun owners who are too stupid to live. However, there appears to have been someone watching over even this dumbest of morons. I believe that Lady Luck was on the job as well and as determined as ever to keep the gene pool cloudy. The gentleman in question here was not seriously injured.

Now, even the dimmest of the dim should know that the very first thing anyone should do prior to handling any firearm,for any reason, is to check it's loaded/un-loaded status. Also, you would think that having inflicted a gunshot wound on ones self, however minor, one would be inclined to see if there were any more bullets in the gun. Not so in the case of our hero. In a flash of truly inspirational stupidity, Major Moron decides to continue with his gun cleaning endeavor while failing, utterly, to check the loaded/un-loaded status of his firearm. However, he finally gave up on the idea after shooting himself, not once, but two more times before taking himself off to a hospital. I call that determination. I also call it stupid; but determinatedly stupid all the same.

For some reason it put me in mind of the stereotypical British Army officer; standing tall and proud, heedless of the hail of bullets and exploding shells all around him, shouting orders to his terrified, cowering men. Brandishing a stereotypical swagger stick at them and saying such stereotypical things as; "Come on lads, for God and country!" or, "Here we go boys, over the top now!" or, my personal favorite, "Stiff upper lip, chaps, whot?" So, pleading forgiveness from my own British ancestors, I feel that it is entirely possible that we have here a case of stoic, British, ancestral determination. Bent on carrying on in the face of adversity, our boy keeps the proverbial, "Stiff upper lip." Unless, of course, that was one of the bits that he shot off. I can almost hear him saying, in a stereotypically stoic British fashion, "Drat and blast, I seem to have shot off my stiff upper lip, egad!" However, if he had shot off his stiff upper lip, he would have probably sounded more like; "Wrat an erast, I heem ooh ave yot ough I yiff uh-er yip, ee-yad!"

No, the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced it was a simple case of Darwin Awards fodder as a direct result of someone peeing in the gene pool.