Approaching Middle Age (Part 1)

No one respects a young man.  Young women at least have the advantage of looking good (although I’m certain some would argue as to whether or not that’s actually advantageous), but a man is still primarily judged on experience and financial status, regardless his age.  I don’t make these rules up.  A woman’s worth is determined more by her appearance than a man, and a man more by his financial security.

So that 22-year old working at Home Depot?  No, no one wants your recommendation.  But if it’s a young woman, would you pretend to listen?

To further complicate matters, a newer generation of parents arrived who, having had significantly more access to livable wages and therefore able to dabble in self-actualization, decided to mold their collective MO and lecture the younger generation on the importance of finding happiness, but also simultaneously still judging harshly those whose finances delayed life event milestones of success.  Because the old expectations, entrenched for millennia due to their core function of species preservation, ran up against the new age philosophies that they permitted, yet never themselves vanished.

So it was that I discovered happiness couldn’t be derived from employment if I wished to obtain these financial life milestones, but still the available employment opportunities available to me significantly delayed them.  Marriage and home ownership were for so long an impossibility.  And, being a young man, the constant disregard for my professional knowledge by my elders served to keep me underemployed, which in turn reinforced my low socioeconomic status.  I was a failure in both forms: neither happy nor financially secure.

This is my generation’s dilemma: to be expected to adhere to the old and new ways simultaneously, even when the two are directly at odds.

Next up: Ammunition, cheese, and cars.

Memories 04

Sights were calibrated, parallax was minimal.  A manufacturing quirk placed the impact point slightly high and right, but I was already used to compensating for that.

The hardware: a Daisy Powerline 970

The projectile: .177 lead field pellets.

The target: an aluminum can (identity confirmed).

The range: whatever the width was from the grass to the far side of the tractor garage.

Vicinity was clear, devoid of sisters.  Windage was nill.  Time to engage.

I was no novice at this.  Taking too deep a breath would cause imbalance–too shallow and natural muscle twitches would be exacerbated.  I inhaled slightly more than a standard breath, held it, took approximate aim, and let the sights fall onto target as I slowly exhaled, squeezing the trigger in time with alignment.

The crack of expanding air indicated discharge.  The round, as expected, impacted the can with the standard ping, knocking it over.  More pumps would have increased velocity, preventing the can from falling.  But that was unnecessary at this range.  The target was down.

One shot.  One kill.  Time for exfil.

***

The average human reaction time is .215 seconds.

Along the projectile’s path, I noticed a small gray dot.  The dot became larger.  And in less than .215 seconds, the pellet I had just fired impacted my right cheekbone.

Yep

You’ll shoot your eye out with those things.

The lesson: check your background.  The barn siding was corrugated steel.  Some things only need to be learned once.

–Simon