You Go, Joe!
By Jonathan Pait (11/11/03)
Okay, guys, confess. When you were a child did you play with army men? You know the ones. They were green and had the flat plastic foundation that helped them stand. (It also was a great place to put M-80s to explode the earth tone Germans to smithereens!)
Rural North Carolina was a great place to play war. Fort Bragg, Pope Air Force Base and Camp LeJune created awareness in a youngster of all things military. As you ran across a minefield (actually cow patties) doing recon around the enemy (the bull on the other side of the field) in preparation for an assault on the enemy headquarters (an abandoned barn), you could look up and see a string of C-130 transports doing the real job of soldiers.
Sometimes the erstwhile soldiers armed with guns fashioned from scrap wood from the cabinet shop got really lucky and saw a team of A-10 Warthogs go screaming low overhead. Boy would you get pumped after that! It was time to charge the hill!
However, such actions today are termed a detriment to our society. For youngsters to find pleasure in war games is a deforming of our culture. To play at such violent games will harm the psyche of any child! At least that is the view of some who over the last several years have attempted to ban these little green soldiers from the play areas of day cares.
Now we have to put up with a Brooklyn Congressman’s attempt to have “realistic toy guns” banned by an act of Congress. Democratic Representative Ed Towns told his colleagues, “It seems that the only thing toy guns accomplish is to make it easier to commit a crime or whet kids’ appetites for a real gun when they get older. They serve no purpose in society and should be banned.”
This Christmas season there will probably be another attempt to remove these toys from the shelves of your local toy store. Yet, in this day when there seems to be an increased recognition of heroes perhaps we’ll be spared the whining. Right up there with the firemen and policemen is another hero from the past, GI Joe. Seems they can't keep the guy on the shelves during recent Christmas seasons. Perhaps all is not lost.
Is it wrong for kids to find "pleasure" in war games? I think not. Come on guys, think back, was your focus on the "killing" while you played at war or was it an acting out of all the heroic tendencies that welled up inside after reading the exploits of the 101 Airborne in World War II or the Marines of D-day?
Wasn't it more fun to get shot by the pretend and unseen enemy than to shoot him? There you are in your position about to be overrun by Japanese yelling their dreaded banshee yell. No, you won't retreat. You are wounded, once, twice and still you fight on.
When you look for heroes on the Christmas shelves this year, don't forget those solders serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. I bet not long ago they picked up their sticks--I mean weapons--and charged across the minefield and protected the position. They did so not for the sake of violence but to live out in play what they saw in their heroes. Duty. Honor. Country.
We lose something if the little green soldier haters of the world have their way. Yet, I smile as I approach the playground. There’s my three-year-old picking up his stick and charging the hill . . . You go, Joe!
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