Bang Bang You’re Dead. What?
But before I tell you what it is, I have to warn you that I’ll be
using a word here that to some is repugnant. It’s just a tiny word and
only has 3 letters to it and yet it can evoke the same explosive
reactions that the words abortion, sex, free condoms, the death penalty,
legal marijuana, and gay can summon forth.
Here goes; the word is “gun. ”Now please, don’t get into a
swivet. Guns have been with us forever and have their place. Even
though I was raised with a house full of guns and was taught to use
them properly, never once in all my years in that house, did it occur to
me to touch them when no one was around. Like most of us I wish
people wouldn’t use guns on people, but they do and that’s the way it is
and that is an incredibly bad thing and something I’d like to see
ended, but know realistically I never will.
But back in olden times when our kids and their pals played
war, and cowboy and Indians games, they played with toy guns. If they
didn’t have a toy gun, they made guns out of sticks, clothes pins, and
of course their fingers. Was it right?Maybe not, but it was what it
was. Records show us that kids played battle games in Ancient Greece
and in the war ruins of various cities thousands of years ago. Kids
playing sword and spear and shoot-'em-up games with each other way back
then was as normal as kids playing video games today and come on, it was
a lot less violent than many of today’s video games are. Have you
seen any of them lately?
But what was embarrassingly obvious back then was that girls,
when they were reluctantly allowed into those games (usually when no
one else was available and the boys were utterly desperate) could not
make gun noises. Boys have that gift, you know. They can make great,
loud guttural explosive sounds to come out of their throats when
they’re slaying their enemies and it’s really quite a terrific noise;
juicy, a big eruptive kablooey!, and down go the bad guys. And the
really talented bad guys would fall over most convincingly, frequently
screaming while clutching their throats and ricocheting off trees and
walls and stuff, writhing and flipping, and taking a long, drama-filled
period of time to gasp their last.
When the girls, the smart, survivor, take-charge girls
demanded that they too get a turn at shooting the bad guys, and were
maybe finally given permission, or were able to convince their
dissenters to give them a turn with a couple of well aimed kicks at the
male shins, they would shoot, and out of their mouths would come a
pitiful sound nowhere near as good as the boys’ gun sounds. It was
more like the sound of a can of spray paint being sprayed that no longer
had paint in it. It was high pitched, gaspy and weak, with a little
dry squawkish action at the end. It was weird and everyone would
laugh. Once. Those girls, OK I was one, knew how to end that
laughter pretty quickly.
But the girls, oh my, when the girls got shot, they usually
just stood there frowning until the boys would yell, “Fall DOWN, fall
down! You gotta fall down, Dummy. You were just shot! Doncha get it?”
He would then turn his head toward his compatriots and say, “Jeez,
girls are jerks,” and they’d nod knowingly. Long sigh. And the
girls, the tough, survival, smart girls would look down at the dirt,
look back up at the boys and say,“You’re kidding. I could get filthy
doing that. You want me to fall down on that?Me?Why would anyone want
to actually do that?You do it. You guys are a bunch of morons anyway,
and I’m going home,” and they’d throw their guns, imaginary or not, onto
that very ground and would stomp proudly off, clean, happy, alive and
smart.
Except for those wimpy, dying-to-please-the-boys girls who’d
actually sigh, roll their eyes, and say, “OK, I’ll try. Shoot me
again. ”The boys would happily take aim, and make that wonderful
boy/gun noise, and those girls would clutch awkwardly at their chests,
try for a couple of agonized death throes and lower themselves carefully
to the ground to the derisive and disgusted hoots of their shootists.
Honestly, I think girls just do not have the innate ability
to play at war and fake that sort of thing and uh oh, I feel a strong
accusation of sexism coming on. No, please believe me, I’m not being
sexist and in fact am not. Girls and boys can be pretty different from
each other and there are many things still extant that boys can do
better than girls, and girls can do better than boys and that’s what
makes life for all of us incredibly interesting. And yet we can still
always work at making those differences fade away if that’s what we
want, although I think cookie cutter humans would be a great, huge bore.
Personally, I applaud the differences and hope they will remain with
us forever.
But no matter what anyone says, no matter the untrue
accusations of sexism leveled at me, no one will ever convince me that
girls can make decent gun noises. In this case folks, the boys get to
win.
Contact LC at lcvs@comcast. net and at www. lcvansavage. com
Click on author's byline for bio and list of other works published by Pencil Stubs Online.
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