My days of childhood violence

In second grade, we were asked to draw a picture and write a paragraph describing what we wanted to be when we grew up. There were your standards: teachers, doctors, firemen. A couple ambitious kids drew a robotics engineer and President of the United States. I freaked my teacher mildly out when I said I wanted to be a “Spy.” I drew myself in army fatigues and war paint with guns and ammo strapped to every inch of my body. I had a bow and arrow slung over my shoulder and throwing stars tucked into the cuffs of my pants (because I was also, apparently, part Ninja).

According to my paragraph, I wanted to be a spy because “you get to sneak into enemy forts and shoot people with guns and blow up buildings with bombs and exploding arrows.” It’s probably not surprising that I had recently seen Rambo for the first time. A kid pulling a stunt like this today would probably get a three-day suspension. I didn’t even get a talking-to, just my mom asking me why I didn’t want to be an astronaut anymore.

I used to make my Star Wars figures spar on the sides of cliffs (a.k.a.: arm of the couch) in an effort to throw each other into the lava (a.k.a.: carpet) below. My Masters of the Universe and Transformers play-sessions always involved mass brawls to the death with plenty of clashing swords and laser fire. My sister and I invented a game appropriately named Spies, which was basically hide-and-seek with guns. While we had toy guns in the house, my weapon of choice was always the vacuum cleaner hose extension. Tucked into my armpit, make a loud TTFF-TTFF-TTFF-TTFF noise and I had myself a powerful little machine gun.

I’ve never seriously thought about killing anybody for real, never owned a real gun, never even gotten into a fist-fight. Pretend violence always stayed pretend for me, though my parents were wise to not buy me the BB gun I wanted for Christmas. Better that I stuck to squirt guns and sawed off broomsticks because I managed to get out of childhood without harming myself or others. Though I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still occasionally draw down with my .357 remote control making rapid PAUGH-PAUGH-PAUGH sounds as I execute imaginary opponents… or perhaps rouge communist agents.