Last night one of the women at book club told us, in a horrified tone of voice, that in Israel, kids play with toy guns. I wasn't the least bit surprised that kids in Israel play with toy guns. I was a little surprised that A) she was horrified by this and B) that she thought this was somehow an Israeli thing. When I mentioned that my brothers and I had spent many long hours playing army, I was told rather pointedly that Jewish kids don't do that. Really.
Later in the evening I happened across a group of Jewish men. (It wasn't so hard to happen on them as they were in my dining room playing cards.) So I took a poll: Did you play army as a kid? Of course we had to refine the question. We established that actual military service did not count as "playing" or as part of childhood. Of eight men at the table, seven were Jews. (The one Goy did play army as a kid.) Here are the results of the poll:
Black Hat Orthodox - Yes
Modern Orthodox - Yes
Assorted Reform and Conservative - Yes, Yes, Yes, No- because I was more of a cowboy, Yes and (drum roll please...) Absolutely Not.
Turns out that the "absolutely not" guy was in a house with too many real guns and therefore not allowed to "play" at guns. When pressed by the other guys, he did admit to playing paintball.
We did not go into other weapons, explosives or a propensity to burn things.
When I explained why I was conducting this poll there was a great amount of confusion about why anyone would think that little boys don't play with toy guns. I agreed that it was confusing and told them that when Hamad was little I had decided not to give him gender biased toys. That was a joke. The wooden arch from his block set became a gun and anything with wheels became a bulldozer. When push comes to shove, kids can always fall back on the old pistol made of nothing but fingers. As soon as I realized that that was just the way he was wired, I let him have "boy" toys.
I suppose the only way to get kids not to play war anymore would be to stop modeling it for them. Maybe not even then. Playing "farmer" just doesn't have the same zing.
I don't know if you remember Katie Pace, but when her father, Dee, was in kindergarten, he was told to draw a picture. He drew a woman in a wedding dress. When the teacher looked at his picture she told him that because he was a boy, he was supposed to draw boy things, like a tractor. So he threw away his original picture and drew a picture of a tractor...being driven by a woman in a wedding dress.
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