Nothing ever happened to me... not like it was told from Hollywood...

   I could show you a picture of me, in my normal pose in Vietnam 1970-71, and I don't look like Martin Sheen going after COL Kurtz, nor like Forrest Gump, it just wasn't me in those movies I should have tried harder. It isn't like media isn't telling a truth, are they not? Everyone knows that all the US Troops were draftees (I wasn't) and stoned (when did that happen?) or hooking up with hookers (???). I wrote a lot of letters (free mail), read a lot of books, and lost weight eating everything I wanted. It was hot, cold, wet, sweat, and bugs abounded. Not quite like it was presented on the screen. I did see some Miss America contestants, and didn't know how to talk to a lady nor what to say. Real non-resident alien life forms - the lovely young ladies and the over-armed officer protection team (???).  I wrote lots of silly words that I don't re-read ever, so something was going through my mind, but for sure nothing important, news worthy, nor recorded for posterity ever happened to me, thank the LORD.

  I was thinking as I watched White House Down yesterday, that Hollywood knows nothing about weapons and shooting skills either. The Delta Force team took forever to get off the helicopter on quick rope, the three fast moving bombers moved so slowly they could see a girl waving a banner on the WH lawn, and by my projection the time to drop their load was way earlier... do you think Lucas got that Death Star bomb drop right in the film as it would have worked in real physical space?  Yeah, I know that was Luke Skywalker and the FORCE I was questioning...

  So since I am a terrible threat to everyone, being a Life Member of the infamous NRA, I decided to take a poll and see where my audience wanted my efforts.  Shooting or visiting the YMCA?  I did both, ripping off about eighty rounds, not killing, wounding nor upsetting anyone. Okay, the man beside me moved his target before I put mine up, but he wasn't upset. So I would have to guess those governors, mayors and all those people against my right to keep and bear arms - just didn't count in my life today. And they didn't get the message to be on the look out for me, either.  Now, I sure didn't make a smiley face like Mel Gibson, nor do one of those pull down and stare down for one killing bullet like his partner did. Just can't get up to that Hollywood level of expertise. By my count, all the firearms deaths of the Old West haven't even caught up to the Hollywood productions, and some of those Indians and bad men were killed over and over -- they did some splicing of old war party attacks on John Ford's movies, and J. Wayne had gotten older in just two years about thirty... can't measure up to the truth of a great movie. I am such a lesser mortal.

  Now I was happy enough with my shooting, since it wasn't perfect but good enough for all I would ever need it. The reason to have a pistol is to have a weapon to get you to a rifle, according to someone that should have told the movies about fantasy. But they are fantasy aren't they? Just fly away and pretend you are there...

   I figured out when I was very young that my mother and father weren't the same as those on television nor the movies. My sisters and brother weren't like the ones I saw, what we did wasn't the same (imagine hours of movies about people reading books, playing card or board games or chores!) The churches in the movies were brighter, the people purer and the music just so much better.

   The romances are better in Hollywood, too. Although the number of divorces in the stars lives is way up beyond my parents'. But the stars really do know how to portray real love and romance and we should all model ourselves after their true portrayals... yeah, like I am going to shoot like Jimmy Stewart in Winchester 73, I don't think so. Yeah, I have to like not living nor acting like Hollywood, one reason I don't fear much is that I am not being overly influenced by flights of fantasy making millions from fools like I could have been once upon a time.