It definitely does.

I’ve been shooting since I was about 5 too.

I haven’t in many years, but I think I was 10 or 11 when my dad got me a 20 gauge.

This is almost identical to what I said to my kid. I explained that it would be a process for both of us and he would need to be as patient with me as I was with him.

My kid has not spoken to me in 4 years. Two slip ups (said she or her twice accidentally) and me saying I was just going to avoid pronouns until it sunk in. Nope. “Fuck you dad. You’ll never see me again.”

His mother messed him all up though. We were very young when she got pregnant (I was 15) and naturally we didn’t make it as a couple.

He was allowed to eat family packs of Reece’s multiple times a day until he was so overweight it was ungodly. I was the bad guy for trying to do anything about it. He had to have a meal separate from everyone his entire life. If the family was having baked chicken and vegetables, my son was having ramen noodles or chicken nuggets. The body issues started there. When I refused and said, “Eat with the rest of us and eat healthy or I can’t help you. I can’t in good conscience feed you pop tarts and ramen for dinner.” Mom used this to paint me as some kind of monster who was starving my kid.

When the kid got to middle school those kids ate him alive. He ended up developing an eating disorder and starving/surviving on lettuce. Mom finally decided it was time to do therapy and blamed me for it. “You just had to make a big deal about what he ate!”

My kid has been spoiled and turned into a self obsessed person who I don’t recognize and I’d cut a foot off to just have my kid back. He’s an adult though, and I can’t change any of it.

All I can do at this point is hope that he regrets this one day but I don’t have much hope. That kid could have a best friend and love them with everything, and then just cut it off like it was nothing over some small thing and never speak to that person again, so my hope is very small.

Sorry to spill all that here. This just made me spin when I read it.

All I can do to show my love is keep paying for the services. (Netflix, Spotify, Hulu, etc.) And it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he’s laughing at me for it, but I’m happy to be doing something, anything. As silly and small as it is, it’s all I have left.

Y’all take care and if a trans kid reads this and can relate to this story, please don’t skip on your family because things aren’t going the speed you like. My kid stopped talking to everyone in my family overnight and never had a conversation with anyone but me. I get that it can be hard and I’m certain there are people who you will have to leave behind, but don’t cut your lifeline/support network and burn bridges unnecessarily. You could end up regretting it and causing yourself and everyone else a lot of unnecessary pain.

I live in the Bible Belt. Catholics might as well be satanist to 99% of the people here.

My neighbor is the only catholic in the neighborhood and that’s how the neighbors talk about her.

She moved here from New York for some reason.

Most of the US doesn’t care what the pope has to say.

I pulled one out of an old laptop and bought an adapter for that purpose. :p Adapter was like 5 bucks.

My daughter shops on those sites. I guess I need to check that out. I get most of my crap on eBay.

I have never once used Twitter or Amazon. I’ve been tempted a few times to use Amazon when I see something half the damn price. I’m poor, it isn’t easy to do, but I just suck it up and keep saving.

One day when I’m not hearing about employees pissing in bottles or efforts to crush unions, they might get my business.

It’s crazy though, the only boxes I ever see on the curb on trash pickup day are always Amazon boxes.

I remember when they sold books and bought cdnow.com.

It’s crazy how they’ve grown.

Damn. I haven’t built a new computer in 10 years.

Are we seriously here now? DAAAAAAMN

I got old.

Bruh, me and my cousin once flopped on a plabdoe on the flavored side of the rocket shlim. He was all, “noooooo!” and I was all, “yoooooo!”

Sickest slides and slices I ever encountered. Slip pops were ruffin bro! I’d be buggin in the slop if I had a buggy.

I’m so sorry. :p

lol, it’s like saying, “Nuh uh! Bundy didn’t kill anyone. He said so himself!” (pre-confession).

How funny!

Man, I don’t even know if I could sit down and count the folks that I knew personally who died from Covid. Shit was crazy.

This dude was just totally disconnected. “It wuh twentwenny. That when uhlecshun, duh!”

Yes, at the eeeeeennnnnnnd of 2020, buddy.

And folks just call it fake. Isn’t that neat?

My god the world needs people like your wife. Man. Tell her that I said she’s amazing.

I grew up in the evangelical movement. I heard over and over and over again (some variation of this) when I was a kid, “The nation that refuses to aid Israel will fall! All of those who turn their backs on the Jews will burn when god returns.”

Those people are deadly serious too. It wouldn’t matter what Israel does.

That is religion. It is crazy to me that we live in this age with endless knowledge at our fingertips and people still believe all of this nonsense.

We can look into the belief systems and religions of people from all over the world, and somehow the majority of us can’t look at our own systems and realize that it’s all bullshit.

You can hear the teachers in rural India say, “The caste system is the will of God! How can you question the will of god?” A couple clicks later and you can hear a child Imam saying, “How can there be any god besides Allah?!” A few more clicks, you can hear a rabbi say, “We are the people chosen by god!” A couple more clicks and you hear the preacher say, “All other gods are false gods. Only our son of god is the one true god!” Hell, you can go down a rabbit hole of all the “gods” currently living with lucky followers of the one true living god right here, right now. Vissarion in Siberia gave those lucky bastards the Last Testament they’ll ever need to read. Imagine being lucky enough to shake your god’s hand and watch him prance around in white and burgundy robes and grow old before your eyes.

There are so many one true gods out there. You’d think that alone would make people think and question their own one true god. Nope. Not only do the majority of us keep putting our hands together and saying amen, we got folks out here making brand new gods today for future people to fight and die for.

It’s amazing.

The whole “small town on the edge of dying” bit. Holy shit have I experienced that firsthand.

See, what happened with a lot of these towns is that their industry became a part of their pride and culture. Where I’m from it’s coal. Trucks everywhere have a decal of a coal miner with one of two phrases. “Coal keeps the lights on.” and “6 inches from hell.”

My grandfather was a coal miner, so was his father, and his father, on both sides of my family. My father realized that the industry was dying so he left (and left us here haha). My brother did it for awhile but left it behind because of the drug problems in the mines. There was a whole underground urine market that kept things moving.

Even the poor fools who never worked in the mines go on and on about coal like it’s some kind of idol.

I would imagine the same thing happens in other places. The people fear big changes until their fear backs them into irrelevance. I’m getting older, so I can relate to that, only I vote for my kids, not to make me feel less afraid. Whatever world they grow up in won’t be one that I’d be perfectly comfortable in. It has always been that way as far back as we have been recording history. No sense in fighting where the world is going just because I don’t understand it or relate to it.

As crazy as it is, Donald Trump appears to have been the single largest motivator to vote in American history. Either him or Covid.

He has definitely motivated me to vote twice, and for the rest of my life I won’t miss an election. Seriously. I had voted before, but I’d sit it out if I was too busy or I didn’t particularly like either candidate.

I have happily voted for Mr. or Ms. Not Trump twice. Now I also have to vote for Mr or Ms Not Influenced by Trump every chance I get too.

I was one of those idiots going back and watching old Trump interviews and thinking, “Well, see, this dude can’t be the total idiot he’s putting on display today. Maybe he’s playing some crazy game and he won’t be as bad as he looks like he’s going to be.”

That lie made it clear to me that my stupid theory was no good. He won, there was no point in playing a character.

He got fame and attention for being exactly what he is. He doesn’t need to be anything else.