Chewin in the Chung

God's inbox.

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Funny post over on Freakonomics. Stephen Dubner's five year old daughter asked him: “Do ‘bad guys’ call ‘good guys’ ‘bad guys?’”.

Yes Anya, yes they do.

I guess that most parents have experiences like this where a child unwittingly says something profound. I don't have kids, but Dubner's story reminded me of a similar incident with a friend's child. I was teaching riflery at a summer camp in Maine, and five-year old Sean Strader came down to Junior riflery with the other campers. Sean's parents worked at the camp, and he was not old enough even to be a Junior, but I figured he was big enough to shoot a .22. So the first session is always range safety, parts of the rifle, etc., and somehow in my lecture I said something like "...what they use in the army.". When I was finished, I asked if there were any questions. Sean raised his hand and asked:
"What's an army?"

I was about 21 years old, and wasn't sarcastic and flippant like I am today. Besides, the question was sincere. So I tried to answer:

"An army is a group of people who are trained to use weapons and fight wars."

Not too bad, I thought. But I sure wasn't ready for the follow-up question:

"What's war?"

You know, "Rifling" is much easier to explain. You can show the kids the rifling in the barrel. But I blundered on, totally out of my element:

"Uh, a war is when two armies meet on a battlefield and use guns and other weapons to try and kill each other."

I'll never forget the look of dismay and horror on his face as he delivered the KO question:

"Why do they do that?"

I don't know, Sean. I don't know.