I remember as a kid endlessly playing guns with the other kids.
That was a lot of fun, wasn't it? Cowboys and Indians, Cops and Robbers, or Good Guys and Bad Guys, it made little difference. And you didn't even need a gun; the ability to point your finger and shout 'bang' or 'pow' was enough to drop your opponent in his tracks (if he played fairly, which wasn't often). I think you had to yell "I got you" for it to be a confirmed kill, and high value was placed on dramatic death throes. It was considered poor form to simply drop to the ground, and the longer it took for you to fall in your final and fatal repose, the better. "You got me! (gurgle)"
Cap guns were the preferred weapon of choice, with those little red rolls you inserted in the gun but I don't think you can get those anymore. It's kind of funny to look back and think of the time when it was perfectly normal for a child to buy what was, essentially, a paper strip of explosives. "Harmless fun" had a different meaning back then. Sometimes I wouldn't bother with a cap gun and would smack them with a small rock to make them go off, which quickly escalated to hitting the whole roll, which gave a much bigger bang. Since those rolls were attached in groups of five it didn't take long to try and hit the whole thing with a brick to see if they would all go off at once, and they didn't. Lot of misfires, and you had to go back and smack them with the small rock to make sure you got them all.
But what's this nonsense about not pretending to plant a bomb? Didn't you guys have firecrackers on the South Side? There was always some kid on the block who had an older brother who would make a clandestine journey to the mysterious, far away realm of Chinatown for firecracker procurement. I thought such things were illegal, but apparently he knew a guy that knew a guy named Chang and soon packs of firecrackers were in our greedy little mitts. Oh, the joy of separating the individual firecrackers to be later inserted into model cars, anthills, or groups of the little green plastic army men. That, too, escalated like any other arms race. Superior firepower was required, and cherry bombs, the glorious red orbs with the green fuse, were the answer. By golly, now we were having fun! And the fun lasted until the appearance of the very serious M-80, not something kids should be playing with (although we did when we were older). The M-80 was like a nuke, not something to be trifled with, and there was an unspoken agreement that the arms race was over and peace and quiet returned to the neighborhood. Looking back, I don't recall any parent, adult, or busybody neighbor yelling at us, telling us to quit fooling around. I wonder why that was.
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I've read the term 'unicorn hunter' before, but being ignorant, I assumed that it has to do with searching for something fanciful that didn't exist, like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Well, now I know better, and I also learned that the apparent opposite of a unicorn is the dreaded 'swamp donkey.' The growing lexicon is marvelous and soon nobody will know what anyone is talking about, even if we act like we do.
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A while back I inquired about what are considered reliable news sources, and I stumbled on an answer in a YouTube video, of all places. It's one of those 'top ten' lists, and it seems kosher, providing caveats for the biases the sources may have. I can't say that I disagree with the results, as I am familiar with all the sources named. Anyhow, here are the top ten in ascending order: Wall Street Journal, New York Times, BBC, NPR, Snopes, Reuters, The Economist, PBS, C-SPAN, and at #1, The Associated Press.
The video is seven months old, so take it for what it's worth and you can view it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHo_YnxEiW0
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