A special little place...

I'm a dad.

Being a DAD is a special thing. It's not the same thing as these numb-skulls that get women [and girls] pregnant and just roll out and treat their kids like lost socks... things you don't go back for.

Dad's do the damn thing!

Dad's worry about their kids; Dad's feel all of their kids pain 100 times more than the kids themselves; Dad's hear the sneezes and the coughs in the middle of the night and we go pull the covers up on our babies; Dad's protect and place nothing at a higher premium than the safety of our children. While very few of us will say we deserve it, there IS a special little place in heaven for real Dads.

But there is another little "special place" I hope, for fathers like Lam Luong.

Lam Luong is the guy that threw his four babies off of an 80 foot bridge in Bayou LaBatre, Alabama last week.

I hope that there is a special little place in hell for fathers like him.

Things effect me very deeply, usually to my detriment - the night after I heard about this insane and senseless quadruple homicide I barely slept. I tossed and turned and tried to keep my eyes closed for more than a few minutes at a time, but it didn't work. I sat on the edge of my bed for a long time around 2:30AM. I just keep thinking about how confused and terrified those children felt as the man that was supposed to be Dad, was murdering them. I just couldn't get the feel of drowning babies out of my head. I wonder if they understood that they didn't do anything wrong. I couldn't understand how this could happen. I found myself praying that God snatched these babies souls before they hit that water and they never felt a thing. (This is what I usually hope and pray when people die, especially from violence.)

I found myself wishing that I could have just two minutes alone with Lam Luong. Two minutes to reach into some of the darker places in my primal being and two minutes to show him the terror and pain his dying children felt. But I knew that that wasn't right. He had broken the rules of our fraternity, not me, and there was no reason that should corrupt my soul because of his ill deeds. So I could only hope that there was a special little place in hell for fathers that murder their babies.

How was I to get to sleep? After a long bout with my own rage and anger, I wandered down the hall to my kids room and watched them sleep. MY KIDS. MY SONS. MY ANGELS. I went over and sat on the bottom bunk bed, where my youngest sleeps. After a few minutes, I laid down and pulled the covers up over myself and drifted off into a peaceful sleep next to him. Maybe I was the one who needed protecting that night.

TTBM