No More Peas

When I was a child, we would make up our own games. I spent hundreds of hours rolling dice and keeping statistics for a baseball card game I invented. And my friend Randy and I had a daily ritual of setting up action figures and plastic army men at each end of our hallway, then rolling balls down the wooden floor to see who could wipe out the other side's army first. And every spring we would get out our marbles and make rings in the dirt and compete in games of our invention, along the way winning and losing fortunes measured in Steelies, Cats-eyes and Bumblebees.

We made a lot of our own stuff back then, like horns out of cardboard tubes, waxed paper and rubber bands. And along the way we learned about the physics of our creations, as Christmas wrapping rolls were too big, toilet paper rolls too small (and revolting) but paper towel rolls just right for a fine baritone riff.

The most memorable toy of my early childhood was a wooden rifle that my foster father, Ross Toomer, had cut on his table saw, sanded down, and painted black and silver. It was an individualized plaything, customized for my size, age and tastes, and thus it became a crucial part of my identity. Many nefarious characters met their fate by that gun, as I crouched behind the peonies in my backyard, sneaking up on the enemies that were alarmingly prevalent in my suburban Bloomington neighborhood.

But as we got older, imaginary battles were not nearly as exciting as those fought with functional weapons and live ammunition. And thus our highest level of ingenuity was reserved for our personal armory, which would reflect upon the bearer as not only a matter of pride, but also, at times, one of personal preservation. Most of us had clothespin guns that when strung with a fat rubber band would inflict just enough pain from medium range to make things interesting, particularly with the feared neck-hit. We also had sling shots, which were difficult to make well, but when properly crafted and with the right piece of innertube and a smooth rock could wound a bird or kill a mouse with a lucky shot; or with a small green apple could strike a friend with sufficient force to set off a battle of raging intensity. We looked forward to Christmas for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that my mother traditionally put out a nut bowl, which provided perfectly sized ammunition for a well-designed slingshot.

But of all the childhood ordnance, the most common was the pea shooter, which was, I suppose, the equivalent of the Old West sidearm. You could buy a pea shooter at any store for 25 cents, although occasionially you'd run across a fat straw that worked about as well. Pea shooters were extremely accurate, had impressive range, were noiseless and easy to conceal: Basically, the perfect elementary school accessory. You could shoot tiny paper balls, or when feeling nasty, spitwads. But as might be expected, the most effective ammo was peas. In those days, every mom made pea soup and every kitchen had dried peas. We'd put a handful in our corduroys before school and be ready for a full-scale battle at recess. But for the more intrepid boys there was an almost overwhelming temptation for occasional sniper action during class, where a surprise shot from an unseen corner of the room could, with the right combination of accuracy and lung-power, cause even the biggest bully to holler out in pain in the middle of one of Miss Mlodzik's endless soliloquys on fractions.

I haven't seen a pea shooter for years. I suppose they were done in by modern gadgets with LCD screens and microchips, but maybe more so by a dearth of dried peas, which have been replaced in most kitchens by sanitized versions of pea soup packaged in a cup, to be filled with water and heated in a microwave; a dietary shift which has resulted in tragic and unintended consequences for today's young boys.