Weapons
Well, I did it…I broke down and bought DS a weapon. Me, the staunch liberal, “we don’t even pretend to hurt people or animals”. My step-dad, Mr Green, will probably be horrified.
He’s finally gotten into the “I want to pretend to shoot at things” mode and I decided to go with the Lawrence Cohen/Playful parenting approach and let go of what are probably MY hangups and “join him” rather than shutting him down. After all, he really IS old enough to know the difference between actually shooting live animals and shooting a piece of burlap with paint on it.
But at least it is a COOL weapon. It’s a PSE Polaris bow with 6 carbon arrows. Since we are both left-eye-dominant, we can even share a bow.
(You can tell with the following exercise – we just figured out yesterday it works with mirrors too. Stand either in front of another person or in front of a mirror. Hold your hands facing away in an “L” shape but with all fingers open. Move them together to form a small triangular hole. Now, look at the other person (or yourself in the mirror) through the hole with both eyes open. The eye that is visible to the person/in the mirror is your dominant eye – the eye you use to determine object placement).
There is a local (free) range about 15 minutes away where we can shoot at hay bales with pictures of animals drawn on them. It’s actually pretty fun.
Now, not being a particularly “cool” person, I’m wondering why the bow is so cool, when even water guns annoy me. Part of it is the reaction I get from others that are “alternative” moms. I’m expecting … judgement and instead I get looks of approval. (except from my husband. I was hoping it would awaken a deep seated urge to have this as a common interest with our son. Not so far. Hmmpfh). Kind of strange. The other part though, is that it is so……traditional? It shows up in everything from history to fantasy.
aussie_sue:
LOL – that sounds tricky! Our behavioural optometrist hands the kids a series of ‘things you look through’ – toy camera, telescope etc. The eye you put it up to is the dominant one. Now that instruction I can handle LOL! DS is left eye dominant too, was mixed for ages. Are you guys R or L handed? Apparently cross dominance makes writing v.difficult, especially for DS who still doesn’t like to cross the midline!
And who knew you could have R and L eyed bows….? Funny you mention bows actually – was thinking about trying that out for my kids too. My father was in the Australian team for .303 benchshooting – but I don’t think I could handle the guns bit. Very hard to manage now anyway with our strict gun laws (and yes, homicides have declined, even though we don’t have a big gun or hunting culture here). I digress! Can you guess I am hiding from the kids – DS is out and I got very cranky, so I am in time out ;-). Uh Oh DD is calling me, shhh don’t tell them where I am…
30 June 2006, 7:10 pmlstroyan:
Interesting about the telescope – yes, I would put it up to my left eye. However, we did this test on DS’s friend and she kept trying to close her left and look through the right. But, when I told her to keep both open, she was left eye dominant – I think she was closing it because if you don’t, it “takes over”. So I’m not sure that is always true…but mine might not be either.
The bows technically are called left and right handed, but our “instructor” told us that eye dominance was most important.
Interesting that you mention the cross-dominance – DS DOES have issues with writing.
30 June 2006, 8:18 pm