Carrying on the White Family Tradition: Autumn's Spike
When I was in college, I took a public speaking course hoping to cure my fear of *public speaking*. It didn’t actually work, but that’s another story for another time. For my really big speech, which had to be to a “hostile audience,” I chose to debate HUNTING. You see, I had been dating my husband-to-be, Duane, for roughly a year, and he’d tossed me into the deep end of the beauty of hunting. That would be ill-fitting, camouflage, stinky deer pee, deeply disturbing on all levels deer estrous, calls that sent shivers down your spine and made you clench your back teeth together in sheer agony, toe-numbing cold, and insanely early mornings (I mean, for real–who gets up at the butt-crack of dawn except the completely, tee-totally insane? Or the completely, tee-totally In Love?)…among other things.
Lynchburg College was plumb full of ultra-liberal children of ultra-liberal parents who knew next-to-nothing about hunting. They had a Polaroid instant capture in their minds of Elmer Fudd tripping through the woods. “Shhhh. Be vewwwwy quiet. I’m hunting wabbits.” Or the evil hunter killing Bambi’s mommy. They never stopped to consider statistics such as the near uncontrollable deer population that wreaked consistent havoc with autos on the highways and backroads. They were ignorant of organizations like Hunters for the Hungry that enthusiastically accepted donations of deer for people that didn’t have enough money to put meat on the table. They were ignorant of the nutritional value of venison, and how it was a lifestyle choice of many individuals to consume it rather than beef and other meats, just like our forefathers. I was on fire to do my presentation.
And it actually went rather well, if I can reach that spot on my back…I don’t know if that class still retains any of the information that I spit out at them, but they asked tons of questions, and seemed to absorb everything in an accepting manner. On comment sheets handed in later, many indicated that I’d changed their perspective regarding hunting. Mission accomplished.
I was hurtled back to this memory when Duane came home not too long ago and related an absolutely hysterical tale about an encounter with an elderly lady in a Chinese restaurant. It’s one of the benefits of growing old, I think, that you can say just about anything you want to–and this woman certainly didn’t hold back. I was proud of my husband, too, for showing his maturity in humoring her. He’s finally grown! 
One afternoon, Duane and a friend from work went to a Chinese restaurant for lunch. They sat down to eat at the sushi bar, where you can order meals or sushi. A few minutes later, an elderly woman came and sat down right next to them.
While sitting there and eating, Duane took a call from his father about picking up a gun rack.
“You want one of those two-gun racks?” he asked, and a moment later put away the phone. He was interrupted almost immediately by the woman.
“You ain’t one of those…hunters….are you?” She made the word sound dirty.
“Oh, no, ma’am. Not me.” Duane lied, choking back a laugh. Beside him, his friends did the same.
“I just don’t see how anyone can kill a little animal…can kill a little deer,” the old woman sneered. Duane looked at her plate, which held all sorts of different meats.
“Well, are you one of them vegetarians?” Duane asked.
“No, I’m not a vegetarian. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy eating meat…”
“Okay, well…”
Lawson's 10-pointer
“I tell you, those deer, they’re smart animals.”
“Yeah, they’re pretty smart.”
“No, I mean it. They’re really smart animals.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll tell you why I say that. I had this deer, this old doe, come in my yard with her two babies. It was a momma deer, and her two babies,” she continued.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ve got a fenced in yard, and I feed ‘em bird seed. That deer come in my yard every couple of days. So I opened my door…not the screen door, mind you…but the regular door, and I talked to that deer through the screen door. Now you may not believe this, but that deer was smart enough that she knew what I was saying. Now I told that deer, ‘Now you bring your young ones back here in my yard, and you’ll be safe. And you go get your husband and bring him back here, too, and then you and your babies and your husband can all be safe in my yard.’ And I leave the leaves down there in my yard so they can lay down in the leaves, and have somewhere to sleep, and I feed ‘em…”
“Yes, ma’am…you weren’t in that movie…you know that movie that was on a couple of years ago, where the guy was talking to the animals and the animals were talking back to him?”
“Ahhh…I don’t believe I saw that movie…?”
“Oh. I just wondered if you were in that movie. Cause the animals were talking to the guy. The animals could talk.”
“Oh. No.”
“Did that deer say anything to you?”
“No. But it understood me. It wasn’t very long before she brought her husband in my yard, and they stayed there for a while.”
“Right. How do you know that this deer was her husband? Did he have a wedding ring?”
“No. But he dropped his horns in my yard and left them for me.”
“How big were the horns?” Duane asked, unable to resist.
“Oh, they were just small. But I tell you, these people that kill these deer, and say ‘Oh, I’m killing them for sport and all, or I’m killing them to eat’…Don’t nobody eat no deer!”
“Well, some people eat the meat. Some people kill the deer, and they give them to people that are poor, and don’t have any money…”
“I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that for a minute. They’re just killing them for fun. Just to get their horns, and put ‘em up on the wall, and look at ‘em.”
”Well…that’s terrible.” Tongue in cheek.
Duane’s friend spoke up at this point. “I kind of like looking at the horns.”
“Well, you ain’t nothing but a dummy. Just a big, heartless dummy, and you’re just trying to compensate.”
The woman continued her diatribe, but on such topics as Obama, Tiger Woods, and Men. Stay tuned for her words of wisdom on men tomorrow. It’s priceless.
