The Village

The match meant absolutely nothing.

You know what I mean. It's like a football (basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer) game, the results of which would have no effect on the league standing. Except it was an IPSC match, the competitors were all amateurs who were out on an unseasonably sunny Spring day in Oregon, spending their money and their time enjoying a sport that they all loved.

The Hobo Brasser was back for his first Oregon match of the year, having spent the previous three months (or was it four?) Snowbirding in Texas.

The clement weather drew 83 competitors to the Albany Rifle and Pistol Club on an April Saturday, for no better purpose than to meet&greet, foul the air with burnt powder and unsolicited political opinion, punch holes in expensive cardboard, perhaps shake the winter doldrums in a tacit vote for Sunny Summer Days yet to come.

Blue skies and bullets downrange, it don't get no better'n this. Even urbane professionals can't resist the urge to feel the gravel beneath their feet and the sunshine on their shoulders (make them happy in a way John Denver would never have understood!) We all have a little redneck in our souls, and we tend to talk a little country in this one month of the year when we can shoot an IPSC match with no pressure of competition but much to look forward to.

One match a month is a Points Match, when we crank the competitive challenge of the stage designs up a notch or three and pretend that we really care whether we win or lose.

This was not one of those matches.

If anything, it was a celebration of Spring, and we were perhaps all a little giddy with the song of the still-absent Robins ... who hadn't wised up that it was time to put a red-breasted show on for the wife and family who professed to believe that we HAD to shoot this match to get ready for the 2006 Competitive Season.

That's the nice thing about a family. You pretend that participation at The Match is a moment of great portent, and they pretend to believe you. The lawn remains unmowed and ragged as father and son ... The Old Man and The Boy, in the words of Ruark ... make their way to the range for a rite of passage which isn't even the first match of the year; it's merely the first really nice day match of the year.

SWMBO and I were squadded with some of the Usual Suspects. It was a treat to see Harold The Barbarian there, because he has been travelling on business for the past 30,000+ miles and we had missed him.

AJ and KJ weren't there, they've kind of dropped out of the IPSC scene due to 'other priorities' and the unfair influence of a brand new Harley Davidson Motorcycle. [sigh!]

As a result of many factors, we were squadded with a melange of people with whom we don't often shoot. Among these more or less new-to-us were Trey and Drew.

Trey is a thirty-something C-Production shooter. Drew is a mid-teens D-Limited Junior. Both were using glocks, and knew each other from non-IPSC family connections.

As the match developed, Trey and Drew (short for Andrew) started a little friendly competition. Trey offered to give five dollars to Drew if he, Drew, could get more alpha-hits than him, Trey. There was no downside to the 'bet'. It was no more than a gentle challenge to the Junior shooter to make his best effort to beat the more experienced, older shooter in a clearly defined, easily quantifiable friendly competition.

Come on, kid. Give it your best shot. Don't worry about speed; focus on accuracy. All you have to do to win the brass ring.

In the blink of an eye, this was no longer just a Saturday at the Range. It had turned into a Shooting Match.

The Old Man was no longer just another guy on the the gravel, he was An Opponent.

The Boy was no longer just a Boy, he was A Contender determined to Do His Best and show all of the Old Men that he could stand his ground and fight it out for the greater glory of ... something or other.

For six stages the went back and forth. The Boy never quite got ahead, but he never quit. After each stage they followed the Scorekeeper around and borrowed his pen so they could write their Alpha-count on the palm of their hand, soon to be transferred to a ragged scrap of paper. This wasn't an official score, it was a talley of the challenge offered and the challenge met.

Who won? I don't know. The rest of the squad ... Old Men, all ... kept a peripheral view of the competition, unwilling to spoil it for the participants by showing an unseemly interest.

The final accounting, and the pay-out (or lack of pay-out) was a private thing between The Old Man and The Boy. Nobody was willing to spoil the moment by interfering in that intensely personal competition.

--

Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote a book about "It Takes A Village" (to raise a child), and while I'm no fan of HillBill, I have to admit that somewhere in this obscure tome she may have had a point. Whether she actually made the point is as inconsequential as the actual results of this competition.

We all, all of us Old Men, have a responsibility to teach the next generation what sports and competition and basic human interaction are all about. Some of us see this, and take the time/make the effort to do what has to be done to teach The Boy how to act.

Most of us don't, and that's okay. If you don't see the need, if you don't know how to respond to it, you probably aren't the right person to teach by example. Those few remaining Old Men don't even have to think about it

They just love the children, and by example they make men of boys. In doing so, they show that you don't have to be a Feral Child (as so many young men are today) to become a Man.

The match didn't mean a thing, but it was important because ...

Well, you know.