Web Notes Online

We've started something new on the online version of the paper. We've always wanted your opinion, only now we're trying to make it easier for you to register it.
On the home page, at the top of the featured stories list, you will find a question or two on a topic of the day. The first topic involved the election results in the race between Harris and Gilchrest. We wanted to know why you felt Harris won the primary contest.
To further the effort, these questions were open and accessible to anyone visiting the site. You did not and will not need a subscription to participate in the process. This is open to all visitors to the site. All comments will be posted unless it is felt they are obviously in bad taste.
The question remained up for a week since it was a major issue involving the Mid-Shore. The voters don't just unseat a nine-term congressman for no reason or do they? You tell me.
A second question was posed last Monday as a column appeared by Carlton Spitzer on guns and the nation's obsession with the right to privately possess arms. As with any right, there is a price to pay. We accept that with free speech we must allow some speech that we might disagree with. With the right to possess weapons, should we accept that some "accidents" happen so the majority may feel secure with their guns?
You tell me.
I have my own opinions. Like everyone else, they are based on personal experience and the experience of members of my family.
Your high school graduation night is one that is supposed to be one of the happiest of your young life. It was almost my last. I drove myself to school and parked on a country road behind the football field. The place was so crowded I wasn't able to do more than wave at my family once the ceremony was over. I turned in my gown (only way to get my real diploma) and returned to my car.
As I fumbled with my keys, a shirtless boy wearing only blue jeans got out of the car in front of me. He was carrying a shotgun and he was sobbing. He was drunk. He was a junior at the school (I didn't know him and never learned his name) and he was despondent over the loss of his girlfriend. It seems that his girlfriend, as a senior, told him it was over and she was going to college.
He told me this story as he cradled the shotgun in his arms pointed in my direction. I stood still and talked to him quietly. There was no one else around. My attention was riveted on him and his gun. I didn't know if it was loaded. I had to treat the situation as if it was. I told the boy he needed to talk to the girl and maybe she would change her mind. I don't recall the details of the conversation. I couldn't later that night, and I can't now more than 30 years later. All I remember is that after a while, he got back in his car and left. I drove home to celebrate my high school graduation with my family. I didn't tell them of the incident until many years later.
Weapons and people in fragile emotional states should not mix. But how can we assume that? If he had accidentally pulled the trigger and blown me away, I guess someone else would have written this column.
I'm not ready to trade the last 30 some years of my life for the boy's right to have a shotgun.
Remember the recent story from the western shore where a 15-year-old boy killed his family? His father was a scout master. The father was my second cousin Jessie's scout master and the incident devastated the entire troop. Jessie's mother had been one of the family members at my graduation.
Often our opinions are shaped by hard experience. That night year's ago made the issue personal for me.
I invite you to share your thoughts.
Oh, and this week the poll question up on the home page involves speed cameras. Do you like the idea or dislike it?
I'd like to know. As always, you can reach me at rpolkchespub.com.
Postscript: I finished this column and turned it in Monday at noon. It was President's Day.
I drove to a local grocery store to get some supplies before going home.
When I pulled in to the parking space, there was a GMC truck facing me with the front passenger door ajar. A boy about 10 years old was sitting there peering toward the back of the truck. I paused, wondering what was going on.
From around the back of the truck a boy emerged with a shotgun cradled in his arms. It was obviously a toy with bright yellow barrels. But it was eerily reminiscent of what I had just written about only an hour before. Apparently, there is common way to hold a shotgun and both times I have witnessed a person carrying one around a car, it was in the same manner.
The two boys were entertaining themselves by playing a little urban warfare. They stocked each other firing soft dart-like bullets as they went.
I was fascinated by this little theater. One boy had a toy life-sized shotgun with side-by-side barrels while the other had an over-and-under version. It had blue barrels. The boys got out of the truck and they circled each other. One would fire, his soft dart arching over the hood striking his opponent. "Got you with that one," he said.
They soon got tired of the scene and moved off toward the store. I sat there for a minute and went in to do my shopping.
Most people had walked by apparently not paying the boys any notice. One elderly woman stopped and said something to them that I could not make out because I was in the car with my doors and windows shut.
As I walked to the store, I couldn't help but be struck by the irony of the incident.