All Things Change

Being the naive and idealistic parents that we are, we teach our boys that guns are bad and thus we don’t have any toy ones. Although the occasional one has slipped through the defenses camouflaged in birthday wrapping paper. The reality of using a gun is that they are designed to stop blooded living things from living. 

Although despite our efforts both our boys, 8 and 3 years old, have taken to making finger guns to shoot each other with. Of course if either of them does pull the finger gun out they demand of the other one, “Stick your hands up”. Oh the allure of the gun, oh what every little boy wants. Power. “Hands up now or I’ll shoot!” 

Explosions. Unless you’re a powder monkey from the war ships of yester year, a miner, a demolition expert, military munitions expert, or terrorist you probably don’t have any real practical use for explosions. But in many parts of the world small explosions mixed with mineral/chemical compounds are set off as fireworks. Fireworks are, on average, safe for the user, horrible for the environment and central to the well being of some economies. My source, a taxi driver, told me that the average family would spend at least a week’s salary each Chinese New Year on colorful and noisy explosives of all sizes.  

There is a sizable chunk of my conscience that really dislikes fireworks but the “little boy within” just can’t help but buy some. Lighting the wick is simple yet hazardous and the success of the strike is always unknown until the first bang or flash. The adrenalin, the power, the attention… the little boy within is glowing. But when my 8 year old son sees the debris of spent fireworks shells piled high in our housing complex he says with disgust, “What a waste of money, poor people need money”. 

So little boys love the abusive power of the gun. They also delight in the spectacle of explosions, but realize it’s a waste of money. Of course big men (like world leaders) also understand these facts, but seem to pretend they don’t… Pretending you don’t understand information is another thing little boys are good at.