The Competitive Shooter Community

I usually cringe when I hear "politically correct speech" terms such as "community".   It's like a buzz-word, and has connotations of people sitting around doing macrame' while singing Kumbaya.   Which is okay in its place, but I've never been much into quilting bees and such.

Which is why I realized that an IPSC match is very much like a quilting bee ... only, like, more competititive than "a communal effort".

Competition is either a team effort or an individual effort.  Never having enjoyed spectator sports (what's the attraction in watching someone else play???) and having been a skinny kid, I never went in for team sports.

Oh, I was on the Shooting Teams in Junior High, High School and College.   And some in post-war adulthood.   But that's still the accumulation of individual efforts.  Essentially, the people on the "team" from one match to the next (this was gallery rifle and outdoor small-bore competition) were those who had fared best in previous matches, many of which were postal matches.

Change-Up:
Today I attended an IPSC (USPSA) match, for the first time in about a year.  For various reasons, I have not been competing for the past couple of years.  Those times I did show up for a match, I often quit early.



My friend "The Hobo Brasser" talked me into it,   He was amused when I called him the night before the match and said "I'm not sure about this; I was cleaning my Kimber and I can't get the Firing Pin Stop to install."

He said: "Are you sure you're not putting it in backwards>".  I replied with great indignation "Of course not, and I'm not putting it in upside down, either!"

We got off the phone, and I went back to the work table and turned the firing pin stop around.  It installed perfectly.  And I got to the match the next just in time to hear him say: "Let me see your shoes, did you put them on the right feet?  Did you put them on backwards?"

It didn't take long for the story to get around the match, and several people asked me about the problems The Geek was having just putting his 1911 back together after cleaning it.

But it took most of the match to realize that these were my old friends, welcoming me back after a too-long absence.

SWMBO

The thing is, I use to go to matches with my Significant Other, who I've always referred to as "She Who Must Be Obeyed".  SHE turned simple competition into an outing that we both enjoyed, after she got tired of me going off to matches two or three Saturdays a month.  She finally said "get me a gun!  I'm tired of waiting at home while you go out to play with your friends!"   She became the reason why my friends endured my acid humor, because before every club match she would give Good Hugs to all of my friends.

Then Cancer, and 3 years of agony, and it broke me when she died five years ago.

And I became a ghost. A hermit.

I did start training New Shooters, and I was glad to retain that incidental connection to The Sport.  but it was difficult for me to actually go to matches.  Because I missed her, and every match was agonizingly awkward; it was as if I had lost my right hand.

But I wasn't much for going to matches.  Sometimes I would try, but leave before the match was over because I had got use to being part of a "team", even though I never knew it.  Extended grief is a terrible indulgence.

TODAY

So I made a determined effort to prepare for the match, and I screwed up almost everything in both my preparation and the actual performance at the match.  And all of my old friends stopped by to ask me how hard it was to install the firing pin stop on a Kimber Custom.

And I heard someone say to my Hobo Brasser Friend (who has gently encouraged me for too long to rejoin the "community" that "it's a good thing that you got The Geek out today; how did you do that?
Having overheard, I butted into the conversation and blurted "He promised me pizza!".

A few minutes later, I overheard another conversation between two competitors ... both of whom I had trained in my "Introduction to USPSA" monthly class.  One of them said: "The thing about IPSC is is that you meet the nicest people at matches".    And I recognized the quote, because that is what I say at EVERY class I teach.  And  I realized that in the squad I had joined today, I had taught at least a third of the dozen members ... and DQ'd a few of them, as well.   And they were still glad to see me.

As Winston Churchill said: ""This is not the beginning of the end, but it may be the end of the beginning".

I'm still a hermit, but I have finally realized that by immersing myself in my grief, I have ignored the outstretched hands of people I never see in social situations except for IPSC matches ... but they are my true friends.  They aren't offended that I never write, I never call.  They're not worried that I may not dealing with my loss as well as I should, or that I've indulged myself, or I'm a hermit.

The Community IS The Competition:
They just like it that somebody they've become accustomed to shooting with has come back to say hello.  And I understand that, having gone out of my way to welcome old shooting acquantences at a match after they have been away for awhile.

They don't care about grief and self-ostracism and all that "community" fol-de-rol.  It's all about "Hi, nice to see  you again, and you're On Deck after this shooter".

It's kind of like Old Home Week.  Only, with the sarcastic comments, and without the touchy-feely crap.

And yes, everybody kicked my ass today.  But I didn't stick around for the Shooters Meeting at the end.  I was looking for Pizza, and I made The Hobo Brasser buy the pizza while I just chipped in for the beer.

Catch 'em in a weak moment, and make them pay for the expensive stuff.  I may be old and feeble, but I can still milk a cow.