I wasn't too upset when my G.I. Joe's foot popped off.
I was 6 years old. Broken toys are just part of the collateral damage in a kid's world.
I got my dad's pliers and tried to surgically remove Joe's foot, which was stuck in his boot. The white plastic connector protruding from Joe's dismembered ankle looked like some grisly broken bone. No blood, of course.
My M*A*S*H surgery to save Joe's foot proved fruitless. The pliers were too big to reach deeply into the boot and grip that ankle bone.
So there, in the dusty sandlot beside our home in Los Alamos, N.M., my Joe became a war casualty.
I was 6 years old. Broken toys are just part of the collateral damage in a kid's world.
I got my dad's pliers and tried to surgically remove Joe's foot, which was stuck in his boot. The white plastic connector protruding from Joe's dismembered ankle looked like some grisly broken bone. No blood, of course.
My M*A*S*H surgery to save Joe's foot proved fruitless. The pliers were too big to reach deeply into the boot and grip that ankle bone.
So there, in the dusty sandlot beside our home in Los Alamos, N.M., my Joe became a war casualty.
My family had no one who served in the military. Walter Kronkite's
reports on Vietnam on the nightly TV news were very distant from my
6-year-old worldview. So, when I pretended that my G.I. Joe with the
flame thrower had lost his foot in battle, my imaginary war instilled
no more dread in me than the mayhem in a Roadrunner cartoon.
Rather than the horrors of war, my child's mind was more scared by the Weegee Monster that local legend said haunted the town's cemetery.
With a G.I. Joe movie fresh in theaters this weekend, I'm reminded of the days when I was drafted into Joe's world. According to Wikipedia, Joe began his battle to conquer the toy chests of American boys on Feb. 2, 1964. That's when four of the 12-inch dolls, modeled on each branch of the military circa World War II, hit retail shelves.
I was a charter enlistee, bugging my parents to buy me my first Joe from the local TG&Y store. But what strikes me today isn't just Joe's invasion of my childhood psyche -- it's the sheer number of guns and war toys that inundated my toy chest as a kid.
My arsenal would have made the Irish Republican Army salivate like Pavlov's dog.
My armory included dozens of three-inch plastic toy soldiers, of course. After drafting my first Joe, I pestered my parents until he was outfitted with not only his original fatigues but also with such separately purchased gear as a flame thrower, a deep sea diving get-up and Marine dress blues that prompted my mother to comment "That costs more than a shirt for you!"
My war chest also included a life-size plastic army helmet that bobbled on my head, a G.I. Joe-endorsed green backpack sized for my boy-sized body, several play rifles and pistols, an eight-inch high plastic German Nazi toy soldier frozen in the midst of tossing a hand grenade, and my pride and joy -- a German Luger pistol replica that I prized because it was "cooler looking" than the American issue guns, and because it was so realistic looking.
So realistic, in fact, that to brandish the toy today at an inopportune moment would get one shot by a police officer mistaking it for the real thing.
Mom and Dad, what were you thinking letting me have toys like these?
Yes, you taught me that the Germans and the Japanese were the "bad guys." Yes, at some point in my later childhood, you educated me about the atrocities of World War II, and the specter of Vietnam. But ... Mom and Dad, what were you thinking letting me have toys like these?
However, these military toys paled in comparison to another item I possessed as a grade-schooler in Los Alamos.
History students will recall that Los Alamos is known as the birthplace of the atomic bomb, where Robert Oppenheimer and other physicists developed the technology as World War II raged.
So perhaps it's no surprise that, as a 6-year-old kid romping with my friends and our G.I Joes across the sandlots of our neighborhood, I sometimes wore a store-bought T-shirt emblazoned with "The Atomic City -- Los Alamos, N.M." Oh yeah, the shirt also sported a vivid red and yellow image of a mushroom cloud -- just like the weapons of mass destruction that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Mom and Dad, what were you thinking?
Despite all the military toys you armed me with, you must have taught me the lessons of war and peace in other ways -- especially when, I recall, my older brother became eligible for the draft during the Vietnam War. As our family sweated that out, suddenly war was no longer a child's game.
Rather than the horrors of war, my child's mind was more scared by the Weegee Monster that local legend said haunted the town's cemetery.
With a G.I. Joe movie fresh in theaters this weekend, I'm reminded of the days when I was drafted into Joe's world. According to Wikipedia, Joe began his battle to conquer the toy chests of American boys on Feb. 2, 1964. That's when four of the 12-inch dolls, modeled on each branch of the military circa World War II, hit retail shelves.
I was a charter enlistee, bugging my parents to buy me my first Joe from the local TG&Y store. But what strikes me today isn't just Joe's invasion of my childhood psyche -- it's the sheer number of guns and war toys that inundated my toy chest as a kid.
My arsenal would have made the Irish Republican Army salivate like Pavlov's dog.
My armory included dozens of three-inch plastic toy soldiers, of course. After drafting my first Joe, I pestered my parents until he was outfitted with not only his original fatigues but also with such separately purchased gear as a flame thrower, a deep sea diving get-up and Marine dress blues that prompted my mother to comment "That costs more than a shirt for you!"
My war chest also included a life-size plastic army helmet that bobbled on my head, a G.I. Joe-endorsed green backpack sized for my boy-sized body, several play rifles and pistols, an eight-inch high plastic German Nazi toy soldier frozen in the midst of tossing a hand grenade, and my pride and joy -- a German Luger pistol replica that I prized because it was "cooler looking" than the American issue guns, and because it was so realistic looking.
So realistic, in fact, that to brandish the toy today at an inopportune moment would get one shot by a police officer mistaking it for the real thing.
Mom and Dad, what were you thinking letting me have toys like these?
Yes, you taught me that the Germans and the Japanese were the "bad guys." Yes, at some point in my later childhood, you educated me about the atrocities of World War II, and the specter of Vietnam. But ... Mom and Dad, what were you thinking letting me have toys like these?
However, these military toys paled in comparison to another item I possessed as a grade-schooler in Los Alamos.
History students will recall that Los Alamos is known as the birthplace of the atomic bomb, where Robert Oppenheimer and other physicists developed the technology as World War II raged.
So perhaps it's no surprise that, as a 6-year-old kid romping with my friends and our G.I Joes across the sandlots of our neighborhood, I sometimes wore a store-bought T-shirt emblazoned with "The Atomic City -- Los Alamos, N.M." Oh yeah, the shirt also sported a vivid red and yellow image of a mushroom cloud -- just like the weapons of mass destruction that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Mom and Dad, what were you thinking?
Despite all the military toys you armed me with, you must have taught me the lessons of war and peace in other ways -- especially when, I recall, my older brother became eligible for the draft during the Vietnam War. As our family sweated that out, suddenly war was no longer a child's game.
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