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Lovely daddy and daughter afternoon as Phoebe and me headed to another local fete (to do almost exactly the same things that we did at the last one). I enjoy the way that she sits passively on a roundabout, seemingly getting no joy from it, but then begs to go on again. On the hoopla stall where everyone is a winner, so you pay £3 for a piece of tat (though I am pretty sure it was the same stall as last time and the same woman running it and it was £4 at the other one. Do they judge it by locale, how the day is going or whatever they feel they can get away with? It was sunnier last time. Maybe people spend more in the sunshine.
My wife (and me, but my wife is much more adamant than me) rails against gendered toys and girls being given pink stuff without even being asked. And it’s incredible how much these things are casually enforced, so she’s very right to be angry. Last time Phoebe chose a pink Princess mirror beauty set, which is OK as long as it’s her own choice. But this time she wanted a rifle toy that shot tiny nerf bullets. Would my wife be pleased that our daughter had selected a toy that might be associated with boys (by sexist idiots) or annoyed that I’d allowed her to bring a fake firearm into the house? I couldn’t be sure. All I know about being married is that I am always in trouble whatever I do. Right fellas? Is this thing on?
I was slightly concerned about why my daughter wanted a gun and whether it was right to let children play with such toys. Not because she’s a girl. I’d feel the same about Ernie. It’s maybe crazy, because I used to play with guns, Action Men and toy soldiers all the time and yet in adult life I have been involved in practically zero shooting sprees and if anything the childhood practice I put in meant I not only killed more people than I might have done, but was also able to evade capture. I know my parents in turn worried about my obsession with playing army - though twenty-five years on from World War II, what had been a reality to them, seemed like a fun game to us.
Nowadays of course, it feels strange handing a child an (admittedly very poor) imitation of an automatic weapon and it feels like you’re somehow turning the weekly events of mass murder into play-time. But Phoebe just sees a fun toy and if she thinks it has any power, it’s just like a wand.
We did have some fun playing with it later, though it’s so flimsy I am sure it will break soon and be forgotten about. And it teaches a valuable lesson about projectiles which is more likely to spark an interest in rocket science than mass murder, If in the future she does kill loads of people with a gun, then you’ll know why and I apologise to the victims and their families and also to my daughter.
The gun didn’t seem to spark any dangerous thoughts in her. She wanted her face painted and waited patiently in the queue for half an hour. I told her it would take too long, but she was insistent. When I praised her for being patient, she said, “Yes, but you weren’t daddy.” She’s got my number.
And she chose to become a bunny, which is hardly indicative of her harbouring any homicidal tendencies. Though without me realising the face painter made it a pink bunny. This stuff really does get everywhere.
