Also about the relevance of violence and the violence of censorship. Also in protest of the oddly named "Decency Act."

The "enlightened" parents of our culture seem to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to keep kids from playing. From playing in the living room or classroom. From playing in front of the house or in the trees or on the computer.

Toy guns, for example. No reasonably peace-loving parent would even consider letting their kids have a toy gun in the house. Guns, the reasonable parent reasons, are bad. Toy guns, the rational parent somehow therefore concludes, are even worse. "Let there therefore be no toy gun in my child's toybox. Nor let there be anything that can be construed as a toy gun, or toy gunlike, or as a component of a gunlike toy. Nor let there be in neighborhood or mailbox any dealer in or advertiser of anything that could possibly construed or used as a toy gun."

And wherever you see these restrictions enforced, you find kids pointing their fingers at each other and saying "bang."

Wherever you are, if you are in this world at all, you know about guns. You see them everywhere. In the movies. In the stores. On the streets. You know what guns are used for. You know that there are people who would have no compunctions about using them on you. You know this, in our culture, from the age of, say, three on. In most cultures, you learned it earlier.

The stuff of kids play is reality. Safe in the fiction of the game, kids can deal with the truth of their world, even though their parents are in denial. Like the evermore present possibility of death by violence, for example. Playing dead they learn how long death really is. Shooting toy guns, they begin to understand the ultimate fiction of power.

So why would any enlightened parent worth their wattage want to keep their kids from toy guns? Especially the ones that really look like toys. That couldn’t be anything else. The supersoaking, the raygunning, rubber-band shooting….

It must be a trust thing. Parents must not really trust their kids. Most parents definitely don't trust play. Play can get crazy. Totally out of control. And so can kids. And so can parents. Especially parents. Especially people who act like our parents, even though they're only elected representatives.

for an entertaining story about Toy Guns from Jean Shepherd, listen to this.

For more about Toy Guns, see re. Toy Guns and Decency