The Sharpest Slingshot

I was never the sharpest slingshot when I was a kid. It was one of the most enjoyable thing to do in the make beleive universe of children. You had power in your hands and you dare use it.

To make a sling you either carve it out of a block of wood, or you can cut a length of stem of the coffee tree, which have branches growing out on opposite sides. You bend the branches until you get a perfect "u", tie them in place, put it over heat or steam it. Then you leave it for a couple of days so the shape stays. Cut the "u" branches to the required length. Attach strips of rubber to either prongs. For the seat, find a length of leather, 2 inc by 1 inch. Punch openings at both ends to attach the strips to.

The nearest I got to hitting a bird, which was the popular target then, was to clip its wings or tail. My friends seem to down their targets with consummate ease. No matter how much practice I put into it, I guess I was not cut for it.

There were lots of birds in my line of fire. Now, I am thankful that I did not harm any of them ( even if I tried hard).

Nowadays, watching people die in the killing fields of Iraq or Palestine, brings back vision of my violent past, (or should I say, saintly, in hindsight) of hunting birds for the pleasure of killing something. Does the games of boyhood extinguish the latent desire to harm others, or is childhood the time for practice?

The games have graduated to something with higher stakes, including so called defense of one's honour, be it personal or for country. In the end carnage ensues out of some process of weeding out the culprits of some perceived wrongs.. It is the same search of pleasure to kill something for the simple reason that we have the instruments to kill, in our hands. What's worse, in the real world the birds will always be the birds and will always be the target. How absurdly wierd that the real world now seems so like the world of childplay.