Large Fierce Mammal

It’s said that you must never suggest to a woman that she might be pregnant unless there is a baby coming out of her at that very moment. In a similar fashion, I would advise that while survival demands recognition of the potential defensive and offensive use of any object, however mundane, as a weapon for or against your continued happiness, suggesting to an otherwise mannerly and devilishly handsome Gentleman that any implement he may have upon his person, and may deign to make visible, might brand him a scoundrel or a brigand is, at the very least, more than a little rude, and deserving of correction.

Here’s a fun story.

Back in the September of 2013,  Mrs. LFM and I dropped by the house of a Friend on the way back from a day canoe trip in the woods, and so I was openly wearing the usual bush gear with the likewise usual sharp and pointies. We live in a very rural hunting and fishing heavy environment, so nothing I had on would have raised an eyebrow if I stopped by a store on the way home. Not that I flaunt it, but one must understand one’s audience. At any rate, there was a young woman visiting who had come with a man my Friend works with, and who was, let us say, young beyond her years. I recall that her name was Dominique, and I was soon to learn  that she had embraced the implications of that moniker to a degree marvelous to behold.

Upon being introduced to me for the very first time in her life, and sharing with me the status of invited guest in another Man’s home, this ever so young woman immediately and pointedly expressed her concern about my being “armed”, thus presenting me with the option of indulging her in one of “those” conversations. She wasn’t shocked or panic stricken you understand, just opinionated in a dangerously and rudely misguided sort of way. The whole thing was made all the more interesting considering the venue – my Friend has an extensive sword collection and has them prominently displayed all over his house.

Now I’ll skip to the entertaining part.

Normally I’d have cut the visit short and to the point, but I was game in the moment and I said, “So the simple visible presence of my safely sheathed knives bothers you. Let me ask you this; what if I’d come in wearing my favourite tweed dinner jacket, with all this still present but hidden underneath. Would that be better?”

She replied, “Well, ignorance is bliss, right?”

Ah Goode Reader! Never were words spoken that so perfectly encapsulate the incipient doom of society! For my part, after a derisive snort and a pause to sip the whisky my Friend had so generously placed in my hand, I replied, “No. Ignorance is most certainly NOT bliss.”

Mrs. LFM was there, at the time so pregnant she was ready to pop any second. We knew well before then that we were expecting a boy, and I finished with this – “We’re having a little boy soon. Let me use that to illustrate how the mere presence of an object is not necessarily a representation of intent. Let’s say you visit us after he’s born, and as you’re leaving you notice I’m filling the baby size bathtub. Nothing positive or negative about the event, I’m just doing it, but the filling tub and the naked baby, are in plain sight as you leave. Now enlighten me – can you tell from my possession of a baby and a filled bath tub if my intention is to give him a bath or drown him?”

That was a show stopper. Of course, there was the inevitable argument that knives and bathtubs aren’t the same, to which I brought her back to the matter of intention – a bathtub used to willfully kill in such a scenario is, by definition, a murder weapon, but it has no power to become so absent human intention. It was then there came a crystalline moment of blessed silence, Goode Reader, before she suddenly changed the subject to her new found preference for lesbian sex, and I can tell you from long experience that’s a remarkably common segue from disquieting talk about perceptions of certain implements as “weapons” where no justification exists.

Coming forward to today, I’ve never set eyes on the young woman again, but I feel safe in saying this – while I sincerely doubt she’s any smarter, she’ll at least avoid me when we might end up alone together and a body of water is nearby.