My son and I went to war last week and we pretty much trashed the house
We did something very fun. If it wasn’t offensive to someone, it was probably unsettling to anyone who passed by our house and looked in our living room window where the carnage was taking place.
I am 58 years old and my son is 26 and yet for about three hours we were kids again. We had a full-scale, two-room battle that put literally hundreds of rubber bands into play. Plastic army men stood frozen on each side of the room, most of them secure in the knowledge that the odds of them actually being hit were minimal.
My dog, Sundance, refuses to watch TV, and was unprepared for the suddenly outbreak of violence. Even though he is a Basenji, a breed that is supposed to be barkless, he took time to approach each of us to complain about the skirmish, making troubled noises that made it clear that he did not find this fun and that it was time for an immediate truce.
Of course, we never took a single shot at him but he eventually left the room and, for the first time ever, put himself in timeout, opting to go sit in his open crate, a strategic, bold and Gandhi-like move that temporarily stopped the battle.
We went in and acknowledged his protest, praised him for his bravery, reassured him that it was all pretend and not directed at him. Then we went back out to war.
It was too late to stop. We had moved furniture about the room to prepare the terrain for the rubber-band fest. We had negotiated some rules. We could only find one rubber-band gun so we decided we would share the fancy weapon by exchanging it every 10 minutes. It proved an unnecessary bargaining point because we soon discovered that it was not as effective or fast as rubber bands fired the proper old-fashioned way with our fingers, just as we had learned in school.
We each adopted a certain Klingon-like set of standards for our teams. Not all of our men would peak out from around books or sink down into pillows. Some would deliberately stand high atop things in precarious positions open to the wind and the elements, relentlessly taunting the other side and inspiring the troops with his bravery until eventually falling thousands of feet to an end.
The truth is, however, that the actual battle was not the dangerous part for these army guys. Each of them would live to fight another day and the bravest would only gather more glory for their high-profile positions. The real danger came after the battle when surrounded by literally hundreds of rubber bands some met their end when they were accidentally stepped on by the warlords who were ordered to clean up everything by the grand evil mother warlord of the house.
Now, I know what you are thinking and the thought came to me too. What if Congress worked out their differences with an entertaining army-man war game? On the surface it sounds like such a good idea that could potentially keep them occupied for such a long time. But if you think about it, you know it would only be a temporary diversion.
They would start aiming for each other’s eyes and then things would get ugly and people would start to cry. The more powerful members of Congress would send out the military to develop secret, rapid-fire weapons that would shoot rubber bands the size of truck tires or drop them from drones, and the fun would go out of the game. Pretty soon we’d all be putting ourselves in crates, hoping once again the next election would fix things. We would remember the basic democratic principle — never arm elected representatives.
But this has led me to an even better idea for our leaders. Why not invite them to build a giant pillow fort? The more powerful leaders all have sofas in their offices so there would be plenty of couch cushions available. The more seasoned senators could build larger forts than the other guys. They could use blankets to keep us from seeing what they are up to, which is an important part of democracy. They could block passageways to keep things from progressing and they could give speeches all at the same time if they wanted to because the sound would be muffled.
I think I’m on to something. I would not recommend writing your elected representative because your letter or e-mail would likely be routed to a junior staffer and you’d just get a form letter back about how they appreciated your input on pillow forts. Instead, I ask a simple thing. If you have enough money or represent a huge corporation, go to Washington, D.C., make your case as usual. But before you leave, ask one small favor of your leader. Ask if you can build a pillow fort right there in his or her office. No need to threaten them with a rubber band. If you have money, they are required by law to help you out. They might enjoy it.
Perhaps we could get Paul McCartney to remake that old John Lennon song and the rest of us could start singing, “All we are saying, is build a pillow fort.” And that will be the beginning of a movement.
Start the movement with your kids tonight in your own living room, even if they are 26 years old. We can change the world, and even if it doesn’t work out, you’ll have laid the foundation for a great rubber-band war.
Steve Eaton lives and works in Logan, Utah, where he works at Muscle Wall. He can be reached at eatonnews@gmail.com