Image is everything, but you have to be careful with it.

I remember when my son was 15 and had his driver's permit.  We rode together, him at the wheel wearing his "cool" shades, one hand slung nonchalantly over the steering wheel while the other fiddled with the radio as he tried to find the right cruising music.  He drove 40 mile per hour on the backroad, and as we approached the intersection to busy 211, he said, "Now, when we get on 211, I have to go faster than this."  I tightened my seatbelt and told him "It's a car, not a rocket.  Just remember that. And stop fiddling with the radio!"

How I worried, after he got his license, when he took the car for a trip or a date.  Everytime he whipped on those shades, my stomach went into nervous spasms.  But after a while, it was ok.  He only wrecked once - rear-ended someone, probably because he was busy looking in the mirror to check his image while listening to something that might qualify as music. 

Then came the day he bought his own truck.  He was so proud of it.  At the time, he was a volunteer fireman and the decal on his rear window read "My other truck is a fire truck!"  

Well, time went on - kids change so fast.  He married, had a baby (they're back together, by the way!), and began working for a security company.  He began wearing black pants, black boots, black t-shirt and a security shield.  And even cooler sunshades.  Did I mention the tattoos? Well, he has them, but the sheriff's department accepted him in the ride-along program, and he began working with them several times a week, as well as holding down a regular job and the security job.  One Sunday, he worked at the jail and thought it was the best thing since ribeye steak.

He began taking the required self-defense classes.  He began working out.  His arms are massive for a man his size.  He shaved his head.  And then one night, he came home with ...earrings.  Two of them.  He looked like Mr. Clean on steroids.  And then one day last week, the phone rang and it was him.  The sheriff's department had offered him a job serving warrants.  He was so excited.  And I was excited for him, but the mom part of me kicked in and worried, as it does every time he leaves to work security at a night club.

And then yesterday he came home with a new canister of pepper spray for work.  "Is this what y'all use at the prison?" he asked.  The only thing I know about pepper spray at work is that I'm allergic to it and can't breathe in an area where an inmate has been sprayed.  And so he joked around with me, put on his cool shades and black outfit, hung his new pepper spray on his belt and got in the car to leave for work.  And then he came back in...

"*#$(*&!(#@$$#" repeatedly, as he splashed his face with water.

and I said - "GASP, COUGH, CHOKE" repeatedly.

He couldn't see, I couldn't breathe.  When he sat down in the car, the pepper spray went off and he sprayed himself.

GOD, it was so much easier when he first got his license.