Having friends around. Sharing a pizza.
Between killing and slaughter.
When I was eight we also warred.
Killing each other. No mercy.
Indian and Cowboys.
I was a proud Apache, my gun was an rifle shaped stick
I'd found in the woods near our house.
If there were girls around we took them hostage
and tied them up to trees and left them there until they managed to wriggle free.
We didn't really hate the girls as much as we said we did.
But who could admit that 8 years old?
I'd fantasize about marrying a pretty squaw and live in a teepee,
next to the little brook,
not too far into the forest.
When my youngest kid, the guy at the far end to the right in the picture,
in a red tee, turned 8 the other week he threw a little bash at home.
There where both boys and girls to my surprise.
But killed each other they did.
Even the girls.
They've got video games so brutal that I wonder how I,
or their mother, could ever allow the kids to play them.
But what can we do? What my kids don't have, others bring with them.
That's life.
And frankly, at the end of the day,
I don't think they are more attached emotionally to the graphic brutally
of those games than we were running around trying to imitate
the sound of guns and shouting "You're dead".
Comments