I Love Corey, Chapter Twenty-One

Sometime during the night Corey rolled off of me. At least he was on his side of the bed, flat on his stomach, when I awoke. One thing about that, at least he didn’t snore in that position. I sort of missed that. On the few times I had caught him snoring, it was a soft kind of high pitched (for a snore) sound. It really wasn’t quite what you’d expect from him, more like someone much younger. Since he usually seemed to be lying on my chest or on his stomach I didn’t hear it very often. I idly wondered if I snored enough to bother him. I ought to ask him sometime. In the meantime, I just lay there, watching him sleep. His face was turned somewhat towards me and I could admire him. I loved the way his long blond eyelashes looked when he was sleeping. His face was so relaxed and peaceful. I think I could watch him forever. Well, if my bladder would let me, I could. Unfortunately, I now had to relieve myself or risk a very wet bed. I’m going to have to cut back on the coffee. It seems to cut into my quality time for watching Corey.

Once I had accomplished the trip to the bathroom and the pause that refreshes, I had a decision to make. Should I go back to bed and wait for him to wake up or should I head for the kitchen and start the day. I would probably have gone back to bed if I hadn’t heard my stomach growl. Not only that, it was letting me know, in no uncertain terms, that it wanted something to fill it. We’d had a light dinner and I was now hungry. Figuring that Corey would be too, I headed for the kitchen. Of course, it seems like he is always hungry. I can’t believe how much he can eat. The fact that he has shot up like a weed probably accounts for much of his appetite. 

I had the coffee made, the juice squeezed, and was starting to cook the sausage when Corey came padding out to the kitchen. He never said anything but started putting the plates and flatware on the table. By the time he was done with that, I had the hash browns cooking and was ready to start the eggs. He had just gotten the first batch of toast out of the toaster when I had the rest of the meal cooked. We got started while the second batch of toast cooked.

By the time we were done with breakfast, we were ready to start talking. The only thing was, neither of us had anything we wanted to say right then. That produced both of us sharing the morning paper. Since he had gotten better at reading, he now wanted to read more than the comics. I noticed he now read the sports section and part of the living section. He seemed particularly interested in what was happening with young people, what they were reading, what they were wearing, what problems they were having, and what music they liked. So far I hadn’t managed to get him interested in the national news or the editorial page. Naturally, those were the two sections I got to read first. When I’d lived by myself, I could read the paper in whatever order I wanted. Now I got it in whatever order he let me have it. We had just finished with the paper when I remembered something.

“Corey, I just remembered that the trap club has a shotgun that’s for young shooters. Would you like to go try it out today?”

“Wow, yessss, can we?”

“Sure, after church we’ll give it a try.”

Needless to say, that got him in gear. I didn’t even have to remind him that the dishes needed to be picked up and put in the dishwasher. It seems like he’s got a pretty good memory about doing his chores when it might influence something he wants to do. I wonder why it doesn’t work that well at other times. Perhaps somebody should do some research on why young people have such selective memories. That ought to be interesting.

It didn’t take long before we were ready. When I first came to this area I had attended most of the churches in order to find one where I felt comfortable. I’d been baptized a Methodist but the local Methodist church was comprised of older citizens and their minister naturally directed his sermons to them. On looking the others over I’d chosen St. Luke’s Episcopal Church as the one I enjoyed attending. They had a nice, although small, pipe organ, a pretty good choir, and a friendly congregation. As I didn’t have any strong feelings as to church dogma, I had elected to attend there. It was a decision I had never regretted. In fact, sometimes I thought I ought to take the necessary classes and join. If all Episcopal Churchs espoused the same loving message as St. Luke’s, they were my kind of church. I’d never heard of any hate or any discrimination from any of the members.

It really didn’t take us long to get ready and head for the church. The day was slightly overcast so the sun didn’t make the stained glass windows glow as much as it did when the day was bright and clear, but they still gave a nice warmth to the church. As usual the homily was both brief and uplifting. As I listened I wondered why some churches preached and practiced love while others seemed to be filled with hate for all things that didn’t exactly agree with their teaching. I’d attended the Rev. Langston’s church on one occasion and found his sermon so filled with hatred for several groups he was speaking against that day that I’d never returned. I just find it hard to believe that someone who professes to be a Christian can hate others. Christ preached that we should love one another. It seems to me those that preach hate have missed what he taught and died for. In my mind they have missed what Christianity stands for.

After the service and a brief visit with Fr. George we went home and changed into casual clothes. After loading the shells and my guns into the pickup we drove to the trap club.

The trap club is small and on a normal Sunday has somewhere around thirty to forty shooters. Today appeared to be about normal. I made arrangements to use one of the traps and use the youth shotgun. We were assigned to trap number six which was the last one and was rarely used unless they were having some type of competition.

It took about twenty minutes to adjust the stock so it fit Corey. After that, I started explaining how it was laid out, what safety rules applied, and what he should expect. We were standing there watching some of the other shooters as they were shooting a practice round and Corey seemed surprised when I told him he shouldn’t expect to do as well as they were until he had shot quite a lot. The members of the squad we were watching were all good shooters and only dropped three targets between the five shooters. He couldn’t seem to believe me when I told him he would be lucky to hit five of his first twenty-five targets. After watching for a couple of squads, we went to our assigned trap and I started explaining how to stand, where to point the shotgun, and where to watch when he was calling for a target. Since I was going to pull for him, it made it easy to stand just behind him and watch what he did. 

He was a typical beginning shooter. He started late, picked his head up, and did about everything wrong that it was possible to do. He managed to hit a total of four targets, two from station three and two from station four. On stations one, two, and five he missed them all. Needless to say he was both surprised and embarrassed. He’d thought I was kidding when I told him it wasn’t as easy as it looked. After that we started in on lessons and how to shoot correctly.

After he had finished his fifth practice round, and only managed to break seven targets on it, he turned to me.

“You keep telling me what I’m doing wrong. How good can you do?”

“Well, I don’t know, it’s been about a year since I last shot and my timing will be off. Tell you what, you pull and I’ll shoot,” I told him. With that I handed him the bug, walked over to the gun rack, picked up my shotgun, and took my place at station one.

“Push the button when I yell pull and we’ll see how good I still am.” With that limited amount of instruction I loaded and prepared to shoot. His pulls were a little ragged as to timing but I went ahead and shot anyway. Twenty-five targets later and I had managed to break twenty-three of them. Several weren’t real solid hits and I could tell my timing was a little off but Corey was impressed.

“Wow, how long did it take you to get that good?” he asked.

“A couple of years of shooting every weekend,” I told him.

“Do you think I can get that good?”

“I don’t see why not. You just have to practice and listen to instruction. I’ll tell you this, you can do as well as you really want to. That not only applies to trapshooting, but to anything you want to do in your life. Of course, there will always be things that you won’t be able to do. I don’t think you’ll be able to be a jockey because it looks like you’re going to be too big and you’ll probably be too small to be a basketball player but anything else you want to do that doesn’t depend on certain size requirements should be open to you. It’s a matter of wanting it bad enough to work hard at it.” I figured it was time to point out that anyone can pretty much make of himself what ever he really wants to. “In most cases, failure is the result of not being willing to strive hard enough to succeed. That doesn’t mean you can become the best in the world at whatever it is you try to do, but you can become competent. One other thing, you can’t be afraid to fail. If you are, you’ll never succeed. Only if you’re willing to try to win, and not worry about failure, can you become as good as possible”

We took a break and had a Coke. While drinking it we discussed what he was doing wrong. After our break he shot a couple more practice rounds and on the last one he managed to break ten targets. I figured he’d shot enough for the day and so we headed for the clubhouse to check out. On the way I got to visiting with a couple of the regulars that always seemed to be at the club anytime I was there. Before I knew it I was talked into entering one of the club’s fun shoots. It was a draw backer upper and I drew Mitch Williams. We’d shot together several times and shot well together. Both of us shot quickly and that gave the second shooter lots of time to hit the target if the first shooter missed. 

As it turned out, both of us missed backing up our partner once during the event. That tied us for third place and we got to split five dollars. Since it cost five dollars for the two of us to enter, all we were out was the cost of our ammunition. I thought to myself that I was going to have to come to the trap club and shoot more often. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed it. I’d quit shooting because I got involved in working with the boy Scouts. Now that was no longer a problem. 

After I paid for the targets and turned in the club’s youth shotgun we headed home. Corey couldn’t seem to stop talking about how well he thought I shot. I kept trying to explain that I hadn’t really done that well but I guess that the fact that I shot a lot better than he did gave him a poor perspective. I finally managed to get him to shut up about the way I shot and get him talking about what he thought about trapshooting in general. He said he’d enjoyed it and would like to try it some more.

By now we had arrived at Downey’s Market. We went in and started trying to decide what to have for dinner. It was one of those days when nothing really jumped out at either one of us. After much discussion, we decided to have a traditional fried chicken dinner, you know, fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, cole slaw, etc. I picked out a nice big fryer and the rest of the items I needed and we went home. I’d just started cutting the chicken up (so I’m a cheapskate, I buy whole chickens because they are cheaper, besides I don’t like the way those packing houses hack them up) when the phone rang. It was Bob Asher asking if Corey wanted his art lesson tonight. I yelled at Corey and handed him the phone.