Gun Safety, Play Safety

With all this talk about gun safety, Marash Girl ponders on the difficulty of raising children (much less adults) to think non-violently in a world where the news, the entertainment world, the digital world is rife with images of violence.   She remembers not allowing her children to have toy guns, or to watch television.     [Marash Girl must admit, however, that she loved squirt guns and never denied her children, or her grandchildren, the opportunity of squirting each other!] After moving into a neighborhood where there were other children, her children (and in her day she) would play with the neighbor children, and when they became unaware that their mother was looking, they used sticks or lacking sticks, their fingers as pretend guns for games of cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, good guys and bad guys.  It was fun to be shot and play at dropping dead!

More tomorrow. . .