Thoughts from the ammo line

Ammo Grrrll is inspired by a number of faith traditions in FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST…She writes:

The Patriarchy took one right in the crotch recently when the brave bold lunatic of a governor of California took a break from his maskless dining at fancy restaurants to sign a bill into law that mandated that in stores with over 500 employees, children’s toy aisles may NOT be segregated by traditional Girl and Boy toys. It’s about time!

I, for one, welcome the opportunity to look for hours for a Matchbox Car that SHOULD have been in plain sight and now is lost in the Pretty Little Pony herd.

If it means that COVID Barbie — with her wide array of cute hand-crocheted masks, syringes for daily self-administered vaccine boosters, little framed photo of Anthony Fauci in her Barbie Dream Home — is located right next to G.I. Joe, (well, at least 6 feet away…). We can all feel good about ourselves. And isn’t that the whole point of being alive?

I believe that the Torah, the New Testament, and even the Koran speak in harsh terms against Gender Reveal Parties, pink and blue baby clothes and toy aisles with trucks in one section and princess dolls in another. Torah: “Verily I say unto you, boys loveth the American Girl Collection just as much as the LEGOs, so separate them not.”

New Testament: “And Jesus said, suffer the little children to come unto me and let them not play with a toy they might actually like, which will lead only to laziness, but make them all – every last one of the two sexes — play with a toy they hate so that you, the parents of Kaden and Penelope, might be considered very bold and brave and get invited to the best parties.”

The Koran: “Jihad now, jihad forever, for those boys who would enjoy a dumptruck filled with Cheerios or girls who might bake wee cupcakes in an Easy Bake Oven. What kind of freaks are they, anyway? Everyone knows that The Prophet (PBUH) assured us that boys and girls, to the extent such genders even exist, are exactly the same!”

Having gleaned a great deal of my theological knowledge from Joe Biden, he of the famous allusion to the “Palmist”, there is a chance that some of those quotes could be wrong…(you would THINK with a Psaki hand-puppet, he would know that’s it’s pronounced Psalmist…)

Oh, Lord, soon there will be absolutely nothing to parody. It’s not like we haven’t already run this experiment. And others of its ilk. I raised my boy kid (now near 50) in the early ’70s in San Francisco when it was considered a dreadful sin to get him a toy gun. We knew people who did not allow their kids to have toy guns and the kids chewed their bologna into the shape of guns and vegan boys fired carrots at their friends (on those occasions when they weren’t too tired to lift their muscle-free little arms due to their protein-free diet…).

At our son’s second birthday party, some well-intentioned adult commies actually DID give him a set of toy dishes. He took one puzzled look at the tea set and set the box aside. Do you know what happened next? The one little girl who was a party guest (because all of our other friends at the time had boys) came over and started putting the dishes into her jacket pockets. “These must be for me,” said Mary Kay. Doubt me? I have pictures!

It all became pretty much moot after our son turned 5. That was when Star Wars came out. Every lost tooth, birthday, Arbor Day, Chanukah, Christmas or Kwanzaa after that, he got only action figures, spaceships, Death Stars and hundreds of accoutrements. For my birthday he even gave ME a stuffed Ewok which I have to this day, like John Kerry’s cap. After Star Wars came Transformers and then video games and that was that for toys. Cash only for 30 years.

There are for sure gender neutral toys – both boys and girls like bikes, blocks, books and musical instruments, puzzles, soccer balls, Crayons and LEGOS. Some girls like trucks and dinosaurs as much as boys do. The notion that we little girls of the ’50s were herded into the doll corner and physically PREVENTED from playing with “boy toys” is just another massive lie like “Hands up; don’t shoot” or “women never lie about sex.” Many of us little girls were not interested in boy toys and those who were played with them freely without being shamed.

Speaking of Crayons, since my Daddy owned a drugstore where things were as “free” to me as they are to the professional shoplifters stripping CVS shelves, I always had the big 96-Crayola box with the built-in sharpener. Poor Max had a mother even thriftier than my own and he only ever got the 8-color box or, on rare occasions, the 16-color one. To this day, he cannot identify “mauve,” “periwinkle” or the mortifying “flesh” color, now quietly retired. Sad.

My bestie in high school never had a baby doll in her life. She climbed trees and loved animals and grew up to be a veterinarian. I got my last baby doll for Christmas when I was ELEVEN and secretly cried myself to sleep the next year when my parents decided I was now too old for dolls. Your mileage may vary. I thought it was important that our son turn out to be a good Daddy and gave him a baby doll when he was 2 or 3. He never played with it for even a minute. He still turned out to be a very good Daddy to his step-son.

Most of the little girls in my neighborhood were obsessed with horses and had many figurines of horses of every color. This was decades before My Pretty Little Pony; I think they were Black Beauty and Trigger and such. I liked the books about the horses, but had no interest in the figurines. I cut paper dolls out of the Sears catalogue and thought Barbie was a self-absorbed, clothes-crazy idiot with a 14-inch waist and 52-inch chest.

Holy cow, Susan, what are you saying here? That there might have been more differences WITHIN the sexes than BETWEEN them? That people are individuals and different? No, surely not. All black people, all women, all gay people are exactly alike.

I would love to be there when the decisions are made as to exactly WHICH of the toys are “boy” toys and which are “girl” toys. And which are neutral. That should be fun. Just when you think that our Ruling Class and the Worst Administration since at least King Herod cannot think up something yet more stupid to occupy their time, they rise like an unsupervised overnight Biden vote count to the occasion. What a time to be alive. Meantime, dear readers, what were YOUR favorite toys as children? Discuss.

And, by all means: Let’s go Brandon.

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