I wish that I could have written this blog post back in 2010, and that I could have gotten all women in North Dakota to read it.  This is probably the most important and helpful advice that I could ever give to women in Dickinson, North Dakota.  If I had a daughter, I would have a serious discussion with her about this when she was about 10 years old, and then when she was about 12 years old, and when she was 14 years old, and 16 years old.

What I am going to say, comes from my experience in living and working in seven different states, from my 40 plus years of being alive, from my experiences with men and women I have met, worked with, and lived with, experience from my own family.  This is advice that my mother gave to my sister, and advice that my grandmother gave to my mother, which served them very well.

I hope to God that you will listen to this advice.  Even if you are stubborn or strong-willed, and determined to do what you want, I hope that at some level this advice will reach you, and possibly save you at some point.

Here it is:  “Men that you do not know, do not taunt them to anger.”  Women and young girls living in Dickinson, you may have grown up knowing the same boys and men since first grade, and you may think that you understand men.  You probably do understand men to some extent.  I am not going to talk very much about psychology or psychiatry to explain this to you, because an in-depth explanation is not needed right now, I just need to make you understand that when men become enraged, they no longer think about what they are doing, they just act.

Please, please understand, that when you taunt a man to anger, you may unintentionally and unknowingly have caused him to reach that point at which he is going to cease thinking, and just act on his anger.  In a small town like Dickinson, older residents may have only seen this personally a few times in their lifetime, if you are a young lady, you may have never seen this.  In the past thirty years in Dickinson, there have been a few shootings where this has happened.

The best example that I can think of is this one:  In approximately 1990, in Gainesville, Florida there were more than several murders of young college students committed by serial killer Danny Rolling.  However, there were two young women college students that were murdered by a man, who was married, the father of young children, an active member in his church, who was known to be decent and hardworking.  This man owned and operated a carpet cleaning business in Gainesville, where the University of Florida is located.  Two young women, approximately 20 years of age, had telephoned him to have him come and clean the carpets in their apartment.  The carpet cleaner turned himself in to the police after he killed them both with his bare hands.  He said that the whole time he was cleaning the carpets, the young women had been wearing short shorts, and loose tank tops, they had kept bending over in front of him showing their breasts, and bending over in front of him showing their bottoms.  He said he had become very upset trying to fight against the lust and sexual frustration that was building in him, he was married, a father, a Christian, he was fighting against his desire.  He managed to finish cleaning the carpets in all of the rooms without incident, but he was upset and didn’t understand why the two young girls were taunting him sexually.  He asked to be paid, to which the girls replied that they didn’t have any money, implying that the “show” should have been enough.  In a fit of rage, he killed them both.

Another example:  In approximately 2010, I had a man working for me named Clyde.  Clyde had been married for approximately 20 years, and had two teen age children with his wife.  Clyde’s wife wanted a separation, but they were still living together.  One morning, I went to pick up Clyde for work, his daughter answered the door and told me that Clyde had been taken to jail for domestic violence.  I went to jail to see how much his bail was, it was $100,000.  What had happened was, that his wife was getting dressed-up and made-up to go on a date with another man, and was taunting Clyde.  Clyde got a knife and was trying to stab his wife.  She was on the phone with the 911 dispatcher while Clyde was trying to drag her out from underneath the bed yelling that he was going to cut her tongue out and cut her face off, this was all recorded.  In the year prior to this happening, talking about other people, Clyde had always said, “You never hit a woman, you ain’t no kind of man if you hit a woman, I would never hit a woman.”

Another example:  At a university that I went to, I had a friend who was Chinese named Mike.  Mike was about 22 years old, his sister was about 24 years old, and she had about two more years to go before graduating from the college of dentistry at this university.  As I already stated, Mike was Chinese, he was about the most non-violent person I have ever been friends with, he was as docile as a Chinese Pug dog.  He and his sister shared a townhouse that was owned by his father who was a medical doctor.  Mike’s sister would pick at him, and pick, and pick, and put him down, all day, every day for a couple of years.  Finally, Mike snapped, he grabbed his sister by the neck, held her down, and choked her.  He let go of her just before she was dead.  Mike was not proud of this, me and his friends only knew about it because of having to help Mike move.

I have many more examples of men that have no history of violence, who have lost their temper with women, and men who have a history of violence who have lost their temper with women.  I don’t think that any more examples right now would make the point any clearer that when men reach a certain point in their anger, they commit violence without any thought of the consequences.

After my mother died, she was about 66 years old, my father started dating a woman that had been a girlfriend in high school, Bobbi was her name.  My father and Bobbi were asking me how my job was going, working for a shipbuilding company.  I was telling them about inspecting tankers and freighters for damage, crawling through the bilges, nearly getting locked in, the welders cutting through their own gas hose when I was in a small bilge space.  My sister replied, that she didn’t know why I was so worried about getting killed.  My father’s girlfriend explained to my sister, that there are a lot worse things than being killed, like becoming paralyzed, or being burned nearly to death.

Apparently, women and young women have a romantic idea about being killed, that it will be over in an instant, and that you will never grow old, that you will always be remembered as being young, that you will be thought of as a heroin, a martyr.  Women should consider that if they are the victim of violence, they may be made disfigured, or be made handicapped.  They may have a long life, but not be able to go places because they are handicapped or not want to go places because they are disfigured.

There are other things that women should consider before taunting a man to anger, such as what state of mind he might be in, or what his past history might be.  Some men, at some point in their lives, feel that they have nothing to lose, they are unafraid of going to jail, unafraid of the police, and may additionally be more dangerous when they are in this state of mind because they have one or more firearms.  There are some men that have spent a lot of time in prison, or in the military, or in combat, who have become desensitized to violence, the threat of violence against them, and have become skilled in hurting and killing people.  Most women do not know, that if you taunt some men to anger, without intending to, they will change from being the person who gets along in the community, to the person that used to have to hurt or kill people to survive.

A friend of mine, Don, spent many years in the military, and many more years in prison.  When Don was about 50 years of age, he was camping, and drinking with some people he had become acquainted with.  He doesn’t know exactly how it got started that they attacked him, he thought that possibly they wanted to take his gold necklace.  They attacked him with a tire iron, he took it away from them and killed them both.  He hid their bodies under a bridge.  The bodies were found within three days, people remembered Don, and Don was caught within a couple of months.  He served approximately fourteen years in prison.  Don’s sentence was not that long, due partly to his advanced age, and partly due to his mental condition.  The court did recognize that due to Don’s combat experience as a Marine in Vietnam, when he was attacked, he snapped back into that person that killed people.