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More than once, I’ve been told that I should just “let people be wrong.” That’s good advice—wise even—but I confess I don’t always have the discipline to sit quietly when foolishness puts on a crown and calls itself wisdom.

After the murder of Charlie Kirk, people everywhere were grieving, angry, and trying to make sense of what felt senseless, including me. Then along came one man who decided the whole tragedy was about slavery and reparations.

Now, I’m not afraid of hard conversations. I’ve been in talk radio, and I’ve been married long enough to know that disagreements don’t end the world. So, I tried to reason with the man.

A baggage handler at Reno-Tahoe International, his name is Tiger, and he came roaring in as his name suggested.

“People just have not learned a lesson,” he typed. “Karma don’t give a damn about who you are or what you look like. Should have been preaching peace and fellowship instead of barking racist ideology and bullshit.”

Well, that’s one way to enter a room. I quoted Charles Spurgeon about bold-hearted men mistaken for mean-spirited ones, hoping to steer him toward reflection. But instead of reflection, I got deflection.

He called me a racist and said my heart was nasty. Now, if you’ve ever been on Facebook, you know the temptation in that moment: to wind up, cock your rhetorical fist, and let it fly.

But I paused, and I tried gentleness. “You don’t know me,” I said. “And yet you condemn me. Shame on you.”

He came back wanting to talk. Promising sign, right?

We even circled back to accountability, agreeing at least that all of us could stand to do a little more of it. But then Tiger veered back into the ditch, insisting the entire country must confess and repent, while I pointed out that individuals are the ones who make choices and bear responsibility.

It was like we were building a house with two hammers and no nails. Sparks, yes. Structure, no.

Finally, I said, “Okay. We are at a stalemate. I’ve never owned a slave and you’ve never been a slave. Therefore, we owe nothing to each other.”

That’s when he pulled the trump card—my skin. He told me my race couldn’t possibly understand, and he warned me that my family might have been guilty back in the day.

Now, here’s the funny part. My family came to this country as slaves. Indentured. A different skin tone and history book, but the same chain.

I don’t wear it today, and I don’t want anyone else to pay me for it. I broke it by living free.

So I told him plainly: “My family came here as slaves. I ask nothing of anyone. You just want money.”

Silence. Hours passed. No response. Conversation over.

And that, my friends, is why I no longer waste much energy trying to teach common sense on the internet. Not because common sense has disappeared, but because people confuse critical thinking with clever ways of defending their own prejudices.

Tiger doesn’t want the truth; he wants victory.

But truth doesn’t need victory. Truth doesn’t need applause or compensation.

It stands, steady and unbending, like a fencepost in a high desert wind. Lies are the things that require invention, dressing up, and constant patchwork.

In the end, I let Tiger have the final word, or rather, the last silence, because the last word is always the hardest—and sometimes the best last word is no word at all. Either way, I’ll keep speaking truth where I can, and leaving the mud to those who prefer rolling in it.

I should have known Tiger wasn’t done. The silence I mistook for surrender turned out to be him catching his breath. Sure enough, he popped back up in the thread like a jack-in-the-box you forgot you wound too tightly.

“Lmao,” he wrote.

Two syllables. No punctuation. The universal way of saying, I win because I laughed.

Then came the kicker: “I served this country and work for my money… This country owe people that built this land that had money, land and life seized.”

Now, I’ll pause here for a moment. Let’s give Tiger his due.

Serving your country is honorable. Working for your money is respectable.

And feeling people got wronged—that’s human. But dragging all of that into the murder of Charlie Kirk felt like trying to repair a leaky roof with a shoehorn.

Wrong tool. Wrong problem.

So I answered in kind.

“I served my country too—twice,” I told him. “My family came from Ireland as indentured servants, and remained as such until the 1890s. So please don’t obfuscate the message by saying Charlie Kirk’s murder is about the original sin of the U.S., because that was paid in full between 1861 and 1865. And if you are a Democrat, look to that history. It was that party that held the black man down. History.”

Now, I know some folks will want to fact-check me. And that’s fine—history loves an argument. But the larger point is suffering isn’t a monopoly.

My people bled, sweated, and served, too. And yet, I’m not sending a bill to my neighbor for something his great-granddaddy may or may not have done.

Tiger wasn’t ready for that kind of plain talk. He wanted to keep the focus on collective blame, while I insisted on individual responsibility.

And in that tension lies the heart of most arguments these days. Some people prefer to assign their anger to history and politics, rather than confronting it themselves in the present moment.

It would’ve been easier for me to quit right there, but I kept typing, because sometimes you plant seeds knowing you won’t be around to see them grow. Maybe Tiger will never agree with me.

Maybe he’ll never believe that truth stands on its own without applause or reparations. But maybe, a year from now, Tiger will remember the Irish servants, or the Civil War graves, or the simple fact that two veterans stood on opposite sides of a Facebook thread but still saluted the same flag.

That’s my hope, anyway.

In the end, he gave me a “Lmao” and a shrug. And maybe that’s all he had left without feeling like a sellout. Wait till Tiger learns that “Uncle Tom” was the hero of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and not the mistaken pejorative it’s become.

But here’s what I know–conversations like this remind me that truth doesn’t need to shout. It just needs to show up, patiently, steadily, and without apology.

People will laugh at it, dismiss it, twist it, and stomp on it. But truth is stubborn, as it will survive long after the comments section has gone quiet.

And if you ever doubt that, remember—history has the last word. Always has. Always will.

It was my twentieth birthday the last time I slept in the town of Klamath. I didn’t know it then, but life was about to give me one of those abrupt shoves that send you skidding across the gravel of adulthood, skinning your knees and pride in the process.

I had just gotten the boot from the Air Force—a fine institution, but apparently, they’d decided I wasn’t quite the poster boy they were after. I needed time to decompress, so I pitched camp in the redwoods, the way a tired soul might slip between the pews of a cathedral when nobody’s looking.

The forest was kind. The silence was thick, only broken by the occasional Steller’s jay with a beak as sharp as its gossip. I built myself a small camp on a hillside, lived off beans and whatever I could cook over the fire, and let the sap and soil work on my restless spirit.

But birthdays make you restless, too. So I hiked out of the woods to the family home, thinking maybe Mom would bake a cake, or at least roll her eyes at me the way only mothers can. Instead, I found the house abandoned—Mom and the kids had moved on without so much as a forwarding address taped to the door.

Still, I knew where the spare key was, as some secrets never die, so I let myself in. The electricity was still running, humming like a stubborn old mule, so I took a hot bath—the first one in weeks.

I built a fire in the fireplace, the kind that snaps and hisses like it knows all your secrets but won’t tell. In the kitchen, I found a dusty can of beans, which I heated as if it were a five-course meal.

Then I discovered a forgotten half-bottle of wine under the sink. It was cheap, but I drank it anyway.

To me, it tasted like proof of how quickly life can scatter—half-eaten meals, half-finished stories, half-full bottles left behind. That night, belly warm with beans and old wine, I slept by the fire.

It was a strange peace—lonely, but not cruel. The next morning, I packed my things, climbed the fence into Camp Marigold, and headed back to my hillside camp in the redwoods, and that was the last time I slept in Klamath.

Until now.

Forty-five years later, my wife and I found ourselves unpacking our luggage at my friend Lori Collins’ Airbnb in Hunter Creek, which she co-owns with her dad, Tom, and brother Mike, Lori had left the cabin with small kindnesses—fresh eggs and jam, bagels, smoked salmon from the Klamath River, plush folded towels, and coffee for the morning.

It wasn’t the same as my abandoned family home, of course. This time, there was no scavenged wine, no dust settling where laughter used to live; this time, there was intention—care stitched into every detail.

I lay there, thinking how life circles back in ways you don’t expect. I’d once slept in Klamath as a runaway from my life, eating beans and burning fallen branches.

Now I was here as a guest, a man with a life’s worth of scratches and stories. The town had changed, I had changed, but the peace that settled on me that night was real, the kind that doesn’t depend on beans or forgotten wine or even electricity.

Sometimes we spend decades trying to return to a place we didn’t know we needed. For me, it wasn’t the house, or the fire, or even the redwoods—it was the simple act of lying down in Klamath, breathing easy, and knowing that for the first time since 1980, I was at peace.

People think healing’s like a day off work—kick back, drink soup, and wait for the body and spirit to knit themselves together. They don’t tell you it can feel like dragging yourself through a tar pit with a piano tied to your ankle.

I’ve learned that healing, whether it’s from a busted bone, a bruised heart, or a disappointment you can’t quite name, has a funny way of rearranging your priorities. Suddenly, things that once fired you up—projects, conversations, even people—seem about as interesting as watching paint dry on a damp day.

When you’re in the thick of it, folks will say, “Oh, you just need rest.”

Sure. Rest.

As if lying in bed staring at the ceiling fan until you’ve memorized every squeak and wobble counts as therapy. The truth is, healing takes patience, and patience is about as popular as kale at a kid’s birthday party.

But then you start to realize how much unnecessary noise you used to tolerate. Old arguments, silly obligations, people who talk too much about their latest gadget—suddenly, none of it matters.

Healing makes you allergic to nonsense. And honestly, that might be its best side effect.

I remember when I cracked two ribs falling off a rock. At first, I was frustrated that I couldn’t lift a box, sneeze, or even laugh without wincing, but once I stopped fussing, something shifted. I started listening more than talking.

I noticed the way sunlight slid through the curtains in the morning. I found myself enjoying silence the way a child enjoys dessert. Healing slowed me down enough to see what I’d been missing while I was busy being “busy.”

The same thing happens with emotional bruises. You pull back from the world, not because you don’t care, but because the noise outside doesn’t match the quiet repair happening inside.

The best part? That disinterest, which feels like a curse, is actually a shield, as it keeps out what doesn’t help, what doesn’t heal. You stop wasting energy on the wrong things so your soul can stitch itself together.

Of course, healing isn’t an excuse to become a hermit in sweatpants forever. At some point, you have to stretch your legs, open the door, and step back into life.

But if you’ve done the work, you come out different. Stronger, softer, less willing to put up with foolishness.

You find joy in littler things—a hot cup of coffee, a belly laugh that doesn’t hurt your ribs, a hug from someone who doesn’t need you to be “fixed” already. Healing also makes you unrecognizable to the version of yourself that once thought exhaustion was a badge of honor.

You laugh at your old self the way you laugh at fashion mistakes in high school photos. Who was that person who thought running at full speed was the only way forward?

Healing shows you that sometimes stopping is the real progress. So yes, healing is no joke.

It’s serious business, messy and slow. But if you let it, it teaches you the oldest common-sense lesson of all–the world doesn’t fall apart just because you sit down for a while.

People who care will wait, as will chores. And when you finally get up, you’ll carry less weight, less noise, and maybe—if you’re lucky—more wisdom tucked quietly into your pocket.

Because healing doesn’t just patch you up, it teaches you how to live gentler, laugh louder, and let go faster, and that, my friend, is no joke at all.

Being a trained observer can be hell. You see things as they are, not as you wish them to be.

There’s no malice, no romance, no filter, just plain reality staring you down like a poker player who’s holding a winning hand. And when I drive around my old hometown of Klamath, that’s exactly what I get—no soft focus, no glow, no storybook setting, just the truth.

Now, truth can be stubborn. It’s like trying to weed a gravel driveway—you tug and pull, and it still keeps coming back.

The truth about Klamath is that while there’s pride in having grown up there—and I carry that pride myself—the place still looks like a patchwork quilt stitched together by three people who didn’t talk to one another.

That might sound harsh, and I don’t mean it as a condemnation. I mean it as an observation, one I’ve carried since childhood.

Back then, “making do” wasn’t just a phrase; it was a lifestyle. Crooked fences, rusted car bodies serving as lawn ornaments, and hand-painted signs that were more wishful thinking than professional marketing—they were part of the scenery.

That kind of scenery sticks with a person, like the smell of wood smoke in your jacket after a campfire.

Driving through today, I see something different and yet strangely the same. There are well-designed buildings, which are impressive structures that accommodate tribal agencies.

It’s a success story. The Yurok Tribe has put down impressive markers of growth, and the new town site has sprouted where there once was only brush.

But just behind those gleaming headquarters is the other truth—the poverty still tucked into the folds of the community. I can’t ignore it, even if I’d like to.

Socialism, as it shows up on all reservations, has roots that run deeper than the Klamath River itself. The system tries to lift people up but often ends up pinning them down, like a well-meaning uncle who insists on fixing your car but strips all the bolts in the process.

I remember my parents hosting dinner parties where conversations eventually turned to dreams of a modern Klamath. People spoke about paved streets, thriving businesses, and homes that didn’t need patchwork repairs every spring.

There was a hunger then, a vision for something brighter, and to be fair, much of that has come to pass—at least in appearance. The storefronts look strong, and the town’s footprint is bigger.

Outwardly, there’s progress. Inwardly? That’s where the long row to hoe comes in.

For every strong building, there are ten sagging porches. For every step forward, there’s a shuffling step sideways.

Poverty doesn’t surrender just because you slap a new coat of paint on it. And pride doesn’t go away either—it clings, fierce and stubborn, because the land is still home.

If you’re reading this and wincing, I understand. Pride cuts both ways.

It’s hard to hear someone point out the weeds in your garden when you’ve spent your whole life tending the flowers. I’m not standing on a soapbox here; I’m sitting on the same old driftwood log as everyone else.

I grew up in it. I love it. I ache for it.

The truth is, Klamath—and towns like Crescent City, Reno, and Sparks—wear their scars openly. They don’t dress them up or tuck them away.

And maybe that’s a kind of beauty in itself, the honesty of a place that refuses to pretend. You take it or leave it, but it won’t lie to you.

So yes, being a trained observer can be hell. It means I can’t just drive by the crooked fence without noticing it still leans.

I can’t ignore the old rusted car in the yard, now home to moss and mice. It also means I can’t help but notice the resilience—the fact that, despite everything, people are still there, still trying, laughing, holding their pride close, like a warm jacket on a cold morning.

And maybe that’s the whole point. Life here has always been a long row to hoe.

But if you’ve ever actually hoed one, you know—step by step, row by row, you get somewhere eventually.

They took a shot at Charlie to send a message. That message was as clear as the crack of the rifle, “Be quiet. Don’t rock the boat. Keep your head down, or else.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but whenever someone tries to tell me I can’t say something, my mouth gets itchy. It’s the same itch I got as a boy when my mama told me not to eat a slice of bread before dinner.

Naturally, I ate two. Not because I didn’t respect my mom, but because the forbidden often smells better than the allowed.

Charlie Kirk’s voice was loud, and it was direct, and it ruffled feathers. The kind of voice that doesn’t just fill a room but makes people sit up straighter.

Someone, somewhere, decided they couldn’t stand it anymore. So, instead of plugging their ears like sensible people, they tried to plug the man himself.

But here’s the thing about silencing voices–it rarely works. Ideas don’t bleed out when bodies do. Ideas spread like spilled ink on a white shirt—you think you’ve scrubbed it out, only to find the stain grew bigger.

I’ve seen men try to scare other men into silence before. Sometimes with fists, sometimes with guns, sometimes with whispers.

It works for a while. Folks get nervous, they hush their words, they look at the ground instead of into each other’s eyes.

But then something shifts. Somebody else—maybe quieter, maybe humbler—steps up and says what needs saying.

Then another. And another. Before long, the silence is noisier than the voices they tried to stop.

Now, I ain’t naïve. Speaking up has always been dangerous.

It’s not new. Socrates had to drink the hemlock for speaking the truth. Lincoln paid with his life. Martin Luther King Jr. fell to a bullet, too. Each time, the message was the same: “Shut up.” And each time, the world got louder instead.

Charlie’s message was simple—agree with him or not, he wasn’t afraid to say it. Such fearlessness doesn’t disappear with the man. If anything, it grows in those left behind.

It plants itself like a stubborn weed in a sidewalk crack, pushing up through concrete. You can stomp on it, you can pour hot water on it, but give it a little sunlight, and it comes back greener.

So here’s the choice–crawl into a corner and hush, or take Charlie’s cue and speak louder. I know which one he’d pick, and I know which one keeps me sleeping at night.

The world doesn’t need fewer voices. It needs braver ones.

It needs folks willing to say what they mean without checking if it’s fashionable first. That doesn’t mean shouting all the time, or being cruel, or stomping around like you’re the only rooster in the barnyard.

It means opening your mouth when your heart insists, even when your knees are shaking.

A good friend once told me, “Courage doesn’t mean you’re not scared. It just means you talked and didn’t run.”

That sticks with me, mostly because he said it right before he asked his high school sweetheart to marry him. His voice cracked, his palms sweated, but he got the ‘yes’ that made his whole life.

So don’t let the shadows spook you into silence.

Say your piece. Write your truth. Tell your neighbor what’s on your mind. Speak it kindly, speak it firmly, maybe even with humor if you can, but don’t swallow it whole.

The bullet that tried to stop Charlie only proved his voice mattered. The real tragedy would be if we all got so spooked we forgot our own voices matter, too.

And if you’re ever unsure about speaking up, remember this: the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and I’d rather squeak than rust in silence.

This morning, I sat down at the kitchen table with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and a strawberry cream cheese muffin in the other, or at least, that’s what the label said it was. The muffin had strawberries, sure enough—sweet, tart little bursts baked right in—but the cream cheese part was about as absent as my hairline.

Now, I don’t know about you, but when something says “cream cheese” on the package, I expect to encounter cream cheese. I didn’t need it to be fancy, just a little pocket of tangy, smooth goodness hiding inside, like a bonus prize for showing up early to breakfast.

Instead, I bit through the muffin top, then the middle, then the bottom, and not a lick of cream cheese was found. I felt betrayed, not deeply betrayed, like finding out your neighbor borrowed your lawnmower and ran off to Mexico with it, but betrayed in a small, breakfast-sized way.

Still, disappointment only lasts so long when there’s a warm muffin in your hand. Strawberries or no strawberries, cream cheese or not, I ate it right down to the crumbs and licked my fingers for good measure.

I figure life’s too short to stay mad at a muffin. That got me thinking, though, how many times in life we expect cream cheese and end up with just the muffin.

We set our hearts on the extra, the bonus, the promise written on the package. And when it doesn’t show up, well, it can throw off our whole day if we let it.

Take fishing, for instance. Every time I head out to the creek, I imagine pulling in a trophy trout that would make the cover of Field & Stream.

But more often than not, I come home with a sunburn and an empty cooler. That’s a muffin-without-cream-cheese situation if there ever was one.

Or think about family reunions. You go expecting your Auntie’s famous potato salad, but she decided this year she’s trying out some kale-and-quinoa experiment.

Nobody says anything out loud, of course—we’re polite people—but you can feel the collective sigh as everyone takes a tentative scoop and pushes it around their plate. No potatoes. Just kale.

But even without the cream cheese, the muffin was still good. I savored it, and my morning went on just fine. Fishing trips without fish still give me quiet hours on the water, and family reunions with kale still give me the chance to laugh with cousins I only see once a year.

I guess what I’m saying is, maybe happiness isn’t always getting what’s promised, but enjoying what you’ve got. Sure, we can write letters to the muffin company, or complain about our bad luck, or fuss about how kale will never replace potatoes–and it won’t–but that’s a lot of energy spent on things we can’t change.

Sometimes you eat the muffin, sip your coffee, and say, “Well, that wasn’t what I expected, but it sure wasn’t all bad.”

Besides, if I really want cream cheese in my muffin tomorrow, nothing’s stopping me from slicing one open and smearing some on myself. Problem solved.

Two items landed on my desk this morning. Not bills, not junk mail, not another politician asking for a donation to “save the Republic,” again.

No, these were better—so much better. Eash helped stitch up some of the holes in my heart that have been leaking since Wednesday, September 10, at 12:23 p.m.

If grief had a timestamp, that would be mine. You don’t forget the minute your world shifts, and you know deep down that “normal” has walked out the door and isn’t coming back.

The first item was a message from my high school friend Nece. She reached out to me in that way old friends do—not with fireworks, not with speeches, but with steady hands and plain words.

She explained why the hurt feels like it does, sharp and personal, though I wasn’t the one who took the bullet or drew the last breath. To put it simply, she said, “You feel this man’s death because you’re attached to him through Jesus Christ.”

It’s like having an invisible string tied between us—me on one end, him on the other. When his life got cut, the tug snapped back, and it jolted me. Of course it hurts, that’s what connection means.

Now, Nece isn’t a theologian with a TV ministry and a gold-plated microphone. She’s just a friend who knew me when I still thought a decent grade and a decent haircut were the tickets to life.

But she gave me a truth you can lean your elbows on. I needed that.

Then came the second item, a video from Lori. It was a raw-cut country song—no polish, no studio shine.

Just a singer with a voice that cracked in all the right places, asking a question that split my chest wide open, “How was your first night in Heaven?”

Well. That’ll stop you in your tracks faster than running barefoot on a goat-head thorn.

I sat there, coffee cooling on the desk, and thought about it, “His first night in Heaven.”

Did the angels show him around like friendly neighbors bringing a casserole? Did he finally understand the things that tie our tongues in knots down here—love, justice, mercy, and why bad things happen to good people?

Did he get to rest his head without worry for the first time in a long time? I hope so, and I hope it was better than the best day we’ve ever had here.

The funny thing is, those two gifts—Nece’s words and Lori’s song—didn’t erase my anger or my grief. They didn’t make me forget what happened, or who we lost, or the fact that this world is, at best, a fixer-upper.

What they did was help me hold it differently. It was like turning a jagged rock in your hand until you find a smoother side.

See, it’s common sense that we can’t walk through life untouched. Sooner or later, we’re all going to bleed, and some wounds leave scars shaped like names.

But it’s also true that we don’t walk through it alone. Sometimes God sends you an old friend from high school to say, “Hey, you’re not crazy. You hurt because you love.”

And sometimes He sends a voice in a song that asks the question you were too stunned to put into words.

It doesn’t take much to turn the tide in a battered soul. Not a sermon, or a new law.

Just a couple of reminders that love ties us together, even past the grave, and that Heaven isn’t some abstract thing way out there. It’s the most realest place there is, already holding the ones we miss.

So today, I’m a little less angry, a little more steady. Still grieving, yes—but with my chin up.

Because if I really believe what I say I do, then the story isn’t over. God is only a phone call away, except the line runs through prayer instead of AT&T.

And if you’re wondering—yes, I’m still putting my pants on one leg at a time. But today, at least, I’ve got a reason to stand a little taller while I do it.

Thanks, Nece. Thanks, Lori. Thanks, Lord.

I needed that.

They told us when we were kids that everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time. It was supposed to be the great equalizer–a tidy parental sermon wrapped in cotton and elastic–nobody’s better than you, nobody’s worse, and for heaven’s sake, don’t act like a peacock in a tailor shop.

Trouble is, pants don’t stop bullets. Manners don’t mend skulls.

And sometimes that tidy little lesson gets dragged out into a field it wasn’t supposed to walk. I learned that again the hard way.

I posted a simple, cold truth: “No, we don’t need to ‘have a conversation.’ You killed the one guy willing to do that.”

One person said there are others having conversations in the open. But, they did not bring the receipts.

That’s because no one else has been doing this. No one.

I expected fireworks, maybe a few hot takes, the usual online thunderstorm. Instead, people scrolled away as the shooter had already taken the last bus out of town–potshots and all, then vanishing profiles.

One friend sent, “Gonna remove myself from your posts, Tom. You’re reacting exactly the way the shooter hoped.”

He tried to soften it with balance and charity. And while I appreciate his thought, no thank you.

I didn’t appreciate the premise that I should clap for my own erasure because somebody wanted the room quiet. I told this acquaintance to do whatever he wanted.

I added, “I didn’t know you knew the shooter’s intent.”

He unfriended me.

Conversation used to be a bridge. I was the guy who’d sit until the janitor switched off the lights — debating, listening, losing arguments with a grin.

But bridges are now choke points. When disagreement starts to come with a price tag of teeth, or worse, the bridge feels less like a crossing and more like a trap.

I’ve had my camera smashed while documenting a mostly peaceful Black Lives/Antifa protest burning down city hall; attacked while leaving work simply for wearing a red Marine Corps hat that someone decided meant MAGA; and viciously punched while sitting in my truck at a stop light by a man angry at my skin color.

These aren’t trophies, they’re receipts. As the ledger adds up, it explains why I stopped buying “both sides” as an automatic good.

That doesn’t mean I cheer for violence. If anything, I hate it harder.

Violence is the lazy answer of people who can’t be bothered with words. I want debates settled by wit, not wounds. But sympathy has a shelf life, as does courage.

You can only hand someone the benefit of the doubt until the doubt starts bleeding you. So no, I don’t owe polite conversation to people who’d rather see me dead than convinced.

Civility isn’t a one-way street where you hand over your ribs to prove a point. It’s a mutual lane — blinkers, signals, agreed-upon rules. When the other driver aims for you and not the median, you stop.

I know some will call this cowardice, claiming that stepping back is letting evil win. But sometimes stepping back keeps you from stepping on a landmine.

It’s practical, it’s preservation. You heal, you learn, you build barricades that aren’t of bodies.

If conversation is still a bridge, then fine, I’ll keep the approach clear. But I’m not going to stand tethered to a leash of performative “both-siderism” while my head gets handed to me as an exhibit.

I want a country where disagreement doesn’t cost a life, let alone a molar. And I will not trade my life for the optics of balance.

If you want to talk, great. Show me you can listen without reaching for a metaphorical or literal weapon.

Show me you’ll stand against someone celebrating death, not just when it’s convenient for “your side.” Until then, spare me the lectures about “giving the shooter what he wanted.”

I’m giving myself something better–a chance to live long enough to build a society where kids learn that pants are for getting dressed in–not for hiding behind.

You can unfriend me, block me, share this, or burn it like yesterday’s paper, but I won’t beg for your permission to be cautious. I’ll keep my life, and when the time comes, I’ll sit down and have a conversation with the kind of people who remember that listening is the first act of courage.

But if violence comes my way again, I will not hesitate to act, as that time for conversation has passed me by, four knuckles and a beating ago.

The difference between me and Superman, according to my wife, is that Superman has super vision, while I need supervision. Now, I’d like to argue the point, but the truth is she’s got me nailed down tighter than the lid on Grandma’s pickle jar.

Superman could see through walls and across whole city blocks. I can’t see my own reading glasses when they’re sitting right on my forehead.

Take last Tuesday, for example. My wife asked me to keep an eye on the pot roast in the oven while she ran to the store.

I heard her, but in the way a husband sometimes hears—like when a football game is on and every word sounds like the teacher from Charlie Brown. I nodded, gave her my “yes, dear” face, and sat down to check the ball scores.

By the time she came back, the kitchen looked like a smokehouse in full production. The fire alarm was hollerin’, the dog was hiding in the bathtub, and the roast–well, it got reduced to something resembling a blackened meteorite.

I tried to explain that Superman never had to juggle the pressures of temperature dials, timers, and play-by-play commentary at the same time, but my wife just shook her head and said, “You need supervision.”

And she’s right.

I can’t walk through a grocery store without her reminding me to stick to the list. Left on my own, I come back with three bags of chips, a jar of neon-orange cheese spread, and maybe a loaf of bread if I’m feeling responsible. She has the kind of eyesight that can find a bruised apple at ten paces, while I’m the guy squinting at the milk carton trying to figure out if it says sell by or smell by.

Superman has X-ray vision. My vision’s more like “ex-ray vision”—as in, I can’t see a thing without my glasses, and even with them, I tend to miss the obvious.

Once, I spent half an hour looking for the TV remote only to discover I’d been sitting on it the whole time. My wife claims she saw it there right away, but decided to let me struggle for sport.

That’s called “marriage enrichment.”

Now, if we’re talking about supervision, that’s where my wife truly shines. She can keep track of everything–me, the dog, the house, the bills, the groceries, and the neighbor’s cat if it wanders into the yard.

She’s got the sharpness of a hawk, the patience of a saint, and the reflexes of a goalie. I’m just trying not to trip over my own shoes.

I once asked her if she ever dreamed of being married to someone with Superman’s powers. She didn’t hesitate.

“No,” she said, “I’ve got all the super I can handle. I just wish you’d remember to put the seat down.”

The thing is, she’s not wrong. I do need supervision, and I’m not ashamed of it.

It’s part of the deal. Some folks are blessed with super vision—seeing what others can’t. I’m grateful for someone who sees what I don’t and still stays to guide me in the right direction.

In the end, I suppose it balances out. Superman might be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but I can mow the lawn without losing a toe, thanks to my wife’s watchful eye.

He might have heat vision, but I’ve got a woman who makes sure I don’t burn down the kitchen trying to reheat leftovers. So no, I don’t have super vision, but I’ve got the best kind of supervision a man could ask for—and if you ask me, that’s a whole lot better.

I have been in combat, and I know what it looks like when a sniper takes their time, lines up the shot, and squeezes the trigger. You don’t forget the aftermath. It isn’t clean, like Hollywood tries to convince us. It’s final. Brutal. And it’s meant not only to stop one man but to terrify everyone else.

That’s what I thought about when I saw Charlie Kirk’s murder. It stank of training.

Whoever pulled the trigger wasn’t some fool pulling shots at random. They wanted a ripple effect, wanted fear, and if I’m honest, for a moment, it worked.

I felt the old war-drum pounding in my chest. Rage, sorrow, the sense that we were getting defiled.

I wanted to grab my boots, my rifle, and my youthful back—and hunt evil down until it stopped twitching. But then I remembered: life doesn’t pause for our fury.

That doesn’t mean it gets easier.

Grief is a strange thing—it’s both sharp and dull. Sharp when the news first hits, then dull as it sits with you, heavy as wet wool on your shoulders.

Rage, though, rage is seductive, as it promises relief, even victory, but it’s a liar. I know that too, because I carried it around in my younger days.

In combat, they tell you a sniper’s bullet is for two people–the man who falls, and the men who freeze afterward. The living carry that wound in their heads, and if they don’t stitch it up quick, it festers.

That’s why I have to laugh a little—even through my sadness—because if the shooter thought they killed Charlie Kirk and our spirit in one clean motion, well, they didn’t factor in human stubbornness. Especially American stubbornness.

We’ve got this peculiar gift for grieving out loud, sometimes clumsily, sometimes angrily, but always together. We argue, we shout, we stomp around on social media, and then, somehow, somebody cracks a joke that shouldn’t be funny but is—and suddenly, the spell gets broken. Then we find we’re no longer paralyzed.

That’s what I cling to.

The truth is, the real sniper these days isn’t hiding on some rooftop. It’s despair.

It picks us off from inside, whispering that nothing matters, that all is lost, that the fight is too big. The only way I know to beat it is to keep moving, keep laughing, keep telling stories, keep showing up for one another—even when we’re tired, especially when tired.

I’m not naïve. Evil is real, bullets are real, and people like Charlie don’t come around every day. His death is a wound, but it isn’t the end.

If I’ve learned anything in this long, crooked life, it’s that death never gets the final word. Not if we refuse to let it.

So I’ll grieve. I’ll even let myself rage for a while.

But I won’t let that sniper have me, not in soul and not in spirit. The way I see it, the best revenge is to live so stubbornly, so joyfully, that evil can’t stand it.

And that’s the shot I’m willing to take.