Arms Race

Jonah raced out of the house on Saturday armed with a bright blue water gun. Water dripped down his elbow. It was the traditional handgun model suitable for blowing away one’s spouse in a jealous rage or knocking coke cans off a stump. A gift from Grandma. Thank you, Grandma.

This was his first toy gun and when I said I wasn’t happy about it. Jonah assured me that it was a “water-gun” not a “toy gun,” so no rules had been broken. All set for political life.

Packing heat, he went looking for neighbor kids. Dylan and Brendan and Zolton said “eh, that’s nice” and returned from their homes with big MFing guns. Something appropriate for futuristic robots or driveby shootings. One had a built in shield. Another had a pump and a rotating barrel. They could unload a gallon of water in 20 seconds.

They mocked Jonah’s little gun and sent him home defeated. Small gun. Small gun. Jonah has a small gun.

I tried to assure him that size didn’t matter. It’s all technique. But I stopped short of saying “it’s the motion of the ocean, honey” because nobody ever buys that one any way.

Instead, I went off to Kmart and bought him the equivalent. What about your moral compunctions about arming children? What about standards and decency? Screw it. This is war, and I’m not letting my kid turn into Italy or Luxenburg for God’s Sake.

Now Jonah has heard tale of the really big water destructo toy, The Super Soaker, which is equipped with an entire tank of water on the back and a pump to increase water pressure. He wants it. I tried to explain that what we had going was a nice system of Mutually Assured Destruction. Everyone’s gun was equal in size. Did he really want to up the stakes? To go nuclear on the neighborhood boys? He assured me that he did.