52 Godly Men : Men of Today Teaching the Men of Tomorrow

What do you get when you cross an OT with an M-16? No, the answer is not a bunch of gobbledy-goop letters, it’s my day with David Cobb. In case you don’t know, O.T. stands for Occupational Therapist, a person who travels to elderly people’s houses making sure their house is safe and that they are able to live by themselves instead of in a nursing home. If you don’t mind visiting other houses on a daily basis and talking with elderly men and ladies, it’s a really fun job.

We started by driving to the dwelling of a woman who was just simply weak all over, because of an injury to her hip. See, she had had an abscess in her hip without knowing it, and one day, she fell on it and it ruptured. But it turned out that she was actually very fortunate; if the abscess had grown any bigger and then ruptured, she would have died. The doctor who diagnosed her actually said that he had seen only about 20 of those cases, and she was the sole survivor. Because of this, we had to make sure that there was nothing in the trailer that was a potential safety hazard. Mr. David began by asking some basic questions, i.e. date of birth, height, weight (at this she kind of glared at him), whether she was in pain, how long she had been weak, etc. Then he had the lady stand up, walk around, and sit down to make sure that she was physically all right. He made some notations, told her to have a nice day, and then we left.

His next patient was a lady whom he had visited before. She smoked like a chimney (“I only smoke 3 packs a day“), and  had also fallen and broken her arm. But even though her hand was hurting, she was still an extremely nice lady, and she really liked Mr. David. He checked her weight and blood pressure, made some small talk, and then we left, but that’s when he popped a surprise.

Because Friday is a really light day for Mr. David, we had the entire rest of the morning left, so [surprise, surprise] he took me to the shooting range in the Cherokee National Park and let me shoot some of his guns! Boy, was I stoked! After arriving, we started out by shooting his 9mm pistol. It might look like a cap gun, and it might fit in your hand like cap gun, but it is no cap gun! It kicks like a mule on steroids, and the first time I shot it, I almost broke my wrist. I had never actually shot a real pistol before, and because of the recoil, I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn door. However, it was loads of fun, and I got to learn what the real deal feels like. Watch me shooting the pistol

When the 9mm’s ammunition had been exhausted, we switched over to the M-16. David had recently bought a scope for it, so it felt like I was performing sniper duty in the Army. We started by shooting at a paper bag set up about 30 yards away. Each clip holds thirty bullets, so by the time we had both taken a turn, the bag was shredded. Watch me shoot the M-16 We shot at some other targets too, but didn’t hit them as many times. The gun had a lot of kick to it, but it was for the most part absorbed by the shoulder rest. After watching him shoot, I figured that if a person came along trying to rob Mr. David’s house, he would be a bit overmatched.

When all of our bullets had been expired (what a sad time that was), we packed up our gear and headed back home: Mr. David to his house to reload his gun and spend time with his family, and me to eBay to see if anyone was selling battle rifles or M-16’s cheap. After all, guys just can’t resist guns, can they?