Dad, I Want to Be Like You

          It's a weird feeling when your child tells you he wants to be like you when he grows up.  Who does he think I am, anyway?  Apparently, Jackson, my five-year-old, thinks I shoot a lot of bad guys.  I've never told him that I shoot anyone (but if I did shoot people, I would prefer that they be bad guys), but he's told his friend that a bad guy tried to kidnap him and that "my dad shot him with his two guns."  I really do not recall the incident in question, so I'm guessing he made it up to impress his friend.

          But does he want to grow up to shoot bad guys?  He's oddly obsessed with that.  Or deer.  He's stated on more than one occasion that he'd like to be an Army guy who shoots a lot of deer.  I'm not sure the Army has that kind of job.  I'll check into it, but since that's not quite my job description (I'm an attorney who doesn't shoot anyone, though in a blackout state I may or may not have used two guns to shoot a bad guy who was trying to kidnap my son), I don't think he's talking about what I do for a living.  

          He sees me through his child's eyes and, because I'm his dad, he sees an ideal.  That realization brings with it a little bit of pressure, because you don't want to disappoint your child.

          Driving home one night with the children, a police officer turned on his overhead lights and pulled me over.  I was more worried about what my children were going to think than what the officer was pulling me over for.  But then I started worrying about whether I'd put the current insurance cards in the glove compartment and how would that look to my children if I completely screwed that up?

          The officer asked his standard questions, asked if I was completely not paying attention to the speed limit signs, and then I think he saw my three boys in the back.  Yeah, I was going 8 miles per hour over the speed limit, and sometimes I drive 10 miles per hour under the speed limit.  There is something about answering a litany of questions about bears and whether they'll eat us if they catch us and why would or wouldn't they eat us if they caught us and maybe we could just shoot the bear with our guns if he tried to eat us that will occasionally divert my full and complete attention from the precise speed I am traveling.  

         The officer kindly let me go without a citation.  Jackson and Ethan, of course, wanted to know why the officer didn't arrest me and take me to jail.  I tried to explain, and Jackson kindly informed me that when he's a police officer and he catches me speeding, he'll arrest me.  Ethan agreed that that would be the proper course of action.

         Despite my run in with the law, Jackson still wants to be like me when he grows up.  Ethan just wants to be a bad guy when he grows up, so I don't know if that means he wants to be like me or not.  One thing I do know is that all of my sons will be better than me when they grow up.  And that's a damn tall order.

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