#324

"At first they behave very well, they're obedient and prompt and they don't seem capable of killing a fly, but as soon as their beards appear they go to ruin."
     — Ursula in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude

Michael's beard is appearing. A few chin hairs, long ones, but that's it. No fuzzy mustache; no chops, chinstrap, tuft here, patch there; no Fu Manchu. But it's coming; he'll try something horrendous soon, prematurely; we all do. Right of passage and all that I guess. Teenage boys and beard fails are as common as a World Series without the Cubs. Wait a minute! That doesn't work anymore and I love it! So I was reading Garcia Marquez joyfully and came upon the sentence above and paused. The first part applies to M; he behaves very well. Must I brace for ruin? Sounds drastic. But I assume nothing. Michael has a simmering, rumbling rebelliousness in him. We all do; dealing with that is another passage. And Michael does, in fact, want to kill things larger than flies. He wants to start hunting. We'll give it a try, as long as we do so with Papa — as an instructor and safety observer — and we hunt respectfully. What does that mean? Well, it means honoring property lines, protected animals, gun safety, seasons, laws, rules — written and unwritten — and eating what we hunt. Michael already eats pheasant and venison, and in general, back to One Hundred Years of Solitude: "She could not conceive that the boy the gypsies took away was the same lout who now ate half a suckling pig for lunch and whose flatulence withered the flowers."

I mentioned rebellion:

There's only a few things that everyone goes through. Rebellion is one of them.
     — Shep Gordon (manager for Alice Cooper)

You don't have kids at home, do you, Bernard. If you did you'd know they all rebel eventually.
      — Westworld, a new show on HBO that's a remake/spin-off of a 1973 science fiction Western thriller created by Michael Crichton, written and directed. Is there a genre better than 'Science fiction Western thriller?' No. Crichton was a master creator. The Great Train Robbery, Eaters of the Dead, and everything else is worth the ride. Jurassic Park, Sphere, Timeline, Disclosure. And ER. Remember that show?

Megan asked me about hunting. I showed her some pictures of the Minnesota Horse and Hunt Club, where we hunt with dogs — like her beloved 'aunt' Anna! — and we shoot pheasants mostly, but also turkeys, chukars, and other birds. We shoot roosters and hens there — the boys and girls both. In the wild, hens are protected; as with humans, ladies are more important (when things get real). Ringneck roosters have brightly colored heads and long tail feathers. They're handsome fellas. The females aren't so fancy. I explained things to Megan as she looked at the pics of the hunters and hunted. She said, "Oh my gosh, you kill the mama pheasants?!" She noticed the difference between roosters and hens. I said, "Uh, well, gosh, do you have to make it sound so horrible?" No answer. I don't think Megan will hunt. But I assume nothing.