I really hate all of that macho, bullish crap about dads “protecting” their daughters by threatening their dates with guns and whatnot. Isn’t like the first rule of owning a gun something about not waving it around in front of people like a complete lunatic???
Thankfully I never really had to go through anything like that growing up. Hell, I still get shivers thinking about the time when the father of a girl who I wasn’t even dating raised his voice at me for calling too late – I probably would’ve moved out of state a lot sooner had one ever actually pulled any of this white trash, overly protective nonsense…
I mean, sure – I get it. Teenagers are stupid. My friends and I did plenty of stupid things when we were growing up, like stealing an orange construction barrel from the school and drinking the cheapest vodka we could get our hands on until we spent the rest of the night puking sandpaper!
But with all sincerity, our stupidity was mostly pretty well contained in that nobody ever got hurt, or drank and drove, or got pregnant, etc…
And I get that not everyone’s stupidity was as harmless – for the opposite of those same things.
I just look at my three sons, and if I try to imagine them in that awkward situation where a father of one of their prom dates wants them to pose with a picture of their rifle, or even just tries to make a joke about how he’ll be cleaning his guns until 10:00pm that night … I don’t really know what I’d do.
Because I can’t very well say that I’d threaten another man for jokingly threatening one of my sons with a weapon … that goes against the whole point of this.
But I might have to sit down and ask him just how much he likes this girl because crazy can be dangerous, too, and I have to look out for my sons just as much as that guy claims to be looking out for his daughters.