The folly of youth? Maybe not.

 Using little more than their imagination, do children still play in the make believe world that was so dear to my generation? Our imagination was so finely tuned that Peter Pan had nothing on us. Of course there were no electronics available or we might have fallen into the same trap our kids now accept as normal childhood development.

Not to be indelicate, but we grew up post-World War II and the forgotten Korean conflict and even though I cannot remember ever fighting an imaginary Korean Commie, my 3 brothers and I sent a lot of “Japs” and multiple thousands of “Krauts” to an early demise and we went to war with them very often and for a good number of victorious campaigns.

Our favorite rifle was quite often a stick and not just any stick, but a hand-hewn stick that each of us took pride in selecting. On a daily basis, we would watch Sergeant Saunders of the TV series Combat and this would recharge our imaginary fantasy batteries.

While we lived on the corn farm in Michigan, we spent hours in the high cornrows patrolling and often sustained heavy casualties that we rapidly recovered from. Now I don’t know what you imagine when I say playing in growing corn, but it can be a very scary place. A lot of animals and reptiles live in a corn field, including snakes, turtles, fox, deer, raccoons, and coyotes and besides all that, it is very easy to get turned around and lost. Needless to say, it was the perfect place to play army and fight the crafty Huns.

Moving to the suburbs of Toledo, Ohio, we found ourselves immersed in deadly urban warfare which pitted a good number of soldiers to help us along with the same number to be “the enemy”.  In the city we all carried plastic guns or Cadet Rifles and the evening war began each night when it was too late to play baseball and lasted until about 8:30 pm when our Mom’s would call us home. I can say without bragging that these city boys didn’t have much of a chance against the band of brothers who cut their chops in the corn rows of south Michigan.

By the time Junior high rolled around, we were still hard at it and spent hours upon hours in the piney woods of North Georgia hunting the Boche and believe it or not there was still evidence of the Civil War battles in those hills. We would run commando style from pot hole to pot hole, where either cannon balls had blown a hole, or soldiers had dug down for cover.

We knew every crook and nanny on the trails through the bushes and dense thickets like we were on a sidewalk and where exactly the ambush we be so it didn’t catch us by surprise. If it did, we would all make gun fire noises in the true style of a cross between the monkey house and the blistering gunfire of the Jeep mounted machine guns of the TV series Rat Patrol. What I’ve described thus far is only a small portion of the games we played that took us outside the house and didn’t cost a dime.

When we lived in Ogden, Utah it was very hot and there were cactus and succulent type plants, as a lot of other vegetation would not grow. Our house set on a hill and abruptly behind it was a 60 degree slope that dropped down about 20 feet. My 3 brothers and I would take off our shoes and basically slide down this sandy hard-packed slope onto the desert floor and lifting each foot to keep from burning it, attempt to run up that 60 degree slope. Sometimes it took 4 attempts and we would grab the brother and help him up. It hurt like the dickens… but what fun! We would then dip our feet in cool water and do it again. Now that I think of it, the sand was probably about a 120 degrees.

Did I mention Wiffle ball? Does the Wiffle ball still exist? We played it whenever there were too few of us to play regular baseball or on the suburb streets under the street light (when Fritz wasn’t around to shoot at us). What a great game and at my present advanced age, I could probably still be a contender (as long as Jim Finley wasn’t on the other team.) I imagine Ol Jimbo has played his fair share of the tricky game and would snuff out my attempts at personal glory.

Mom’s and Dad’s back in the day didn’t feel obligated to provide every luxury under the sky for us and for the most part, couldn’t afford it if they did. We found ways to entertain ourselves and everything worked out just fine. The trophies we got, we actually earned. The money we had come from recycling soda bottles, or mowing lawns. Most of us grew up with rich imaginations ready to move out when the time was right and make our own way and most of us have prospered… after 30 or more years.

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Are we raising a nation of wimps?

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Almost daily I hear about the sissifying of our children and it causes me to wonder if there will be a United States of America before I buy the farm and leave the proceeds to my bride.  Let me make my points and examples and then you decide if I am right, wrong, or just another blow-hard.

I’m a baby boomer, born during the Korean War to a World War II father and a mother who raised a daughter and four boys.  My dad was a tool and die maker and he would send his resume out and just like that, we would pack up and move.  Consequently, my brothers and I learned to stand up for ourselves.

Back in the 1960’s kids did two things for fun; they played baseball and army.  Every kid had a toy cowboy six-gun or toy rifle.  We idolized cowboys who would shoot the bad guys in the black hats and John Wayne’s six-gun (read hog leg), Winchester lever gun and his powerful fists.

My brothers and neighborhood boys would prowl the streets in the evening, jumping over fences and shooting at each other with our toy guns, which more times than not resembled a stick.  We had incredible imaginations.  We mostly fought Nazi’s, better known to us as heinous “Krauts” and I’m not bragging when I say my personal body count numbered close to a million – killed or wounded.

Make no mention that I myself was either killed or shot to pieces almost every day and sometimes I would put on a spectacular display of jerking and flipping as the Krauts would riddle me unmercifully.  No matter, as I would reanimate only to take them on anew the next night – after baseball.  We were the Sandlot kids.

Moving around the country, I had plenty of opportunities to defend my new kid status and often engaged in real life fisticuffs which only helped me define myself as a man and did me no real harm and that includes getting knocked out in the hall in the 9^th grade by a football player 3 years older than me.

It was 1967 and I was a Yankee in North Georgia and the teacher could plainly see me lying on the floor in the hall when I came to.  I got up slowly, collected my books, and took my seat.   The classroom was silent and blood was pooling below me on my desktop.  I stood up and walked to the teacher’s desk and before I could really say much, she pushed a hall pass to me.  I went up front and called my mother twenty miles away and she drove those twisted Cherokee County roads to take me to the doctor.  Not once was I approached by a teacher as I sat and waited, even though the class bell rang and many students witnessed me sitting there waiting with a bloody face and shirt.

I was feeling pretty beaten when we got to the shotgun building of a doctor’s office and as we walked down the hall, I spied my antagonist and his face was swollen to the point his eyes were almost closed and his hand was broken.  The doctor told me I only had a bruised nose and by default fighting rules and the extent of his injuries versus my own, I learned the next day I was declared the winner.  You see, this fellow only got in two punches and the second one was a hay maker, whereas I must have struck him ten times before he clocked me.  I feared the guy, but once I realized a fight was inevitable, I fought like a cornered…defender.

I went on to enlist in the United States Air Force and serve my country honorably in South East Asia for two tours working 12 to 14 hours a day supporting F-4 Phantom and F-111 Aardvark fighter jets with the 366th Gunfighters and the 6280th Combat Support Group.

Kids today are scared of bugs, anything that crawls, mice, the dark, someone pointing their finger like it is a gun…  What?  Yes, a boy was suspended somewhere here in the good ol USA the other day for doing just that.

A fellow here at work told me today his son was suspended for three days because he told someone he read a recipe for making a bomb.  The son had a near perfect record heretofore and made decent grades, but the mere whisper to a classmate of his supposed knowledge, got him suspended.  It did not matter what my friend or the boy said to defend him.  He was guilty.

My son got a three day suspension for bringing a nail file, scissors, and toothpick in a red Swiss Army Knife configuration to Crockett Elementary – because it “looked like a knife” and “We have a zero tolerance policy against knives, Mr. Marshall.”  When I challenged the decision, they graciously removed 2 of the 3 day’s penalty.  I walked away wondering what in the world is becoming of our school policies.

On the other hand, we have deranged and criminal people doing violence in our schools and… oh my God; bullies, so what is the solution?  First, there is nothing we can do to stop a crazy person from doing crazy things, or bullies trolling for a target, but we sure as heck fire can teach our kids to stand up for themselves. 

Second, a criminal is a criminal, not because of the economy or society, but because they choose to commit crimes over working for what they get.  We need to teach our kids to defend themselves on all levels and when they are of an age where they can up the ante, tell them it’s okay to up it, either by learning fighting skills or getting a concealed handgun permit, or both.