Shooting Husbands

Long ago in a land far away, sixteen women shot their husbands within a two week period. It was in Houston in 1961, and the cops were responsible.

It seems that when women were finally allowed to put restraining orders on their violent husbands and ex-husbands, they kept calling the cops to come remove the offenders. The cops got tired hauling in the same fools all the time, so one day when a call came in from a distressed wife, the deputy who answered the phone said, "Lady, why don't you just shoot him?"

The rest is history - which I would verify if I could find the story on Google in 30 seconds or less. I can't though, so my mother's version of this tale will have to be taken as Truth.

As Mother tells it, within a couple of weeks sixteen men were shot. I doubt anybody got killed or it would have been a bigger story and I'd have found it on Google. I don't know if it was 16 men or 26 either, and it doesn't matter anyway. What matters is that the dang cops are the ones who told the women how to manage the shootings so they wouldn't get in trouble, and the women all thought it was a fine idea.

I know it's a true story because my father remembers hearing drive time disc jockeys at 5:00 rush hour warning husbands, "Don't be number Seventeen!"

I don't know if restraining orders were just becoming prevalent in the US, or if someone finally told women in Texas they had the right to protect themselves from abusive men. You never know about that stuff in Texas since the well known holiday Juneteenth came about because it's when the slaves learned they had been freed two and a half years earlier by the Emancipation Proclamation.

Even if I moved back to Texas tomorrow, I would get in trouble for shooting Buzz Kill. And I really don't want to shoot Buzz Kill. I just wish he weren't such a dumbfuck, aka Buttroy, about money. It has occurred to me that a major reason I was involved with three or four narcissists in a row during and after my divorce (Stonerdate 9.28.08) is that dealing with narcissists is so mind-boggling that I was completely distracted from being so enraged at Buzz Kill that I filed for divorce.

The Narcissist period was important to my personal development in all kinds of healing ways, but now that it's over, I can no longer ignore the steam coming out of my ears every time I talk to Buzz Kill about money. About anything at all for that matter since I'm so pissed about the money I can't see straight.

It'll be all right, though. Next year we'll sell the apartment, I'll get all my money and only talk to Buzz Kill when there's something going on that involves Velvet.

Velvet leaves on Sunday for a week long trip to Yosemite National Institute. Last year, Velvet went to Olympic National Park in Washington State. Before that Velvet went to Yellowstone. Velvet gets to go all over the damn place - but it's all for the good of humanity since he's fixing to become an Environmental Hero. He got accepted to the Environmental Engineering school at University of Colorado at Boulder in addition to SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. We're all very proud of our young Al Gore with Panache. His zits have even started to clear up.

Once his plane is in the air, I've got a date with the Nice Accountant from Brooklyn. According to the Weather Channel, spring will be in the air.