Where Mercy Is Shown, Mercy Is Given - Duane Dog Chapman [111]
As hard as we try as parents, though, our kids still have the gift of free will and therefore the ability to make their own decisions along the way. You hope and pray you’ve done everything you can to prepare them to be out on their own, but there are no guarantees. I read an article about two boys riding ATVs without helmets who decided to have a chicken fight. They crashed into each other going forty miles per hour. They didn’t stand a chance of survival. Worse, one of the guys had his girlfriend on the back of his vehicle. She survived, but ended up in a coma. After hearing that story, I thought about those parents and how they felt when they heard the news. I have no doubt those boys knew about helmets and safety—that their parents taught them what was right when it came to riding their ATVs, and yet, sadly, they chose to ignore all that they knew was for their own well-being, and in the end, they paid the ultimate price for their stupidity. In the process, they left their parents behind to grieve and wonder for the rest of their lives what they could have done to prevent their children’s deaths.
As a parent, I spend lots of time questioning whether I am being the best role model for my kids. Do I set the standard I want them to live up to, or am I somehow showing them it’s OK to be less than your very best? I’ve made a lot of decisions along the way that I probably wouldn’t have made if I’d had the knowledge then that I have now. Of course, experience is born out of necessity, and I know there’s no way to gain it before its time.
I spent years trying to prove to my kids that I wasn’t the bad guy their various mothers made me out to be. All of my ex-wives told our kids I was a no-good criminal, a biker, and a deadbeat dad. It was important to show them who I really was and what I did for a living. I wanted them to see firsthand that their dad wasn’t any of those things.
There were times I took the kids on bounty hunts when I probably shouldn’t have because they were too young or the situation was too dangerous. I’ll confess that on more than one occasion I even ended up taking my work home with me.
One morning, the kids woke up to find a fugitive handcuffed to the fifty-five-gallon fish tank in our living room. I’d warned the guy that if he broke my fish tank and hurt my fish or my kids, I’d beat the crap out of him. The kids got up to get dressed for school and asked the poor fool if he wanted a piece of toast. To them, he was nothing but another bad guy Daddy caught who’d spent the night at their house. They each waved good-bye to him as they left for school like it was an everyday occurrence and just another morning in the Chapman household.
Sometimes the kids would be in the car when I caught my guy. I’d warn him he’d better be civil and polite in front of my babies or he’d be roadkill. The kids never thought much of the day-to-day adventure that was our life. They’d start up a conversation with the captured fugitive like an old family friend had gotten into the car.
“Hi. You going to jail? What did you do wrong?” they’d ask him.
On a few rare occasions, I even used the kids as decoys. Leland once carried Baby Lyssa up to the front door of a suspect’s house and asked if they had seen her missing puppy. Baby Lyssa was crying like she had really lost her best friend. We sprayed a little milk on her face to make it look like real tears, messed up her hair and clothes so it would look like she was distraught. When they answered their door, Leland looked in the house to see if our guy was there. Blam. He was.
I spent years trying to instill a solid work ethic into each of my children. I taught them to strive for excellence at whatever they did. I wanted them to seek out things they were interested in and become the best at them. Some have followed that route, while others…not so much.
Leland had shown an interest in my work from the day he came to live with me. As he got older, I began taking him with me whenever