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War Games

By Gregory Ross

For three years in the late 1970's I did child care for a living. In spring of 1976 I found myself unemployed again. A friend suggested I go to a free training program run by an organization called Bananas. It trained people to be child care workers and offered job referrals as well. I always liked kids, so it seemed like a good idea.

The training was simple for the oldest child, brother of two sisters whose parents both worked to just get by. As one of only a few men in the field I was both suspect and in demand. For the first six months through Bananas I substituted in almost every child care situation. I worked in infant programs, preschool programs and after school programs (which really are before and after school). Before I got a full time job in an after school program and was no longer on the Bananas' substitute referral list there was not a week that went by that some little kid, walking down the street with her/his parent didn't yell out, "Hi, Greg"; often to the consternation of their parent, who probably had not met me because I had substituted. At that time I had hair down to my belt and a Grizzly Adams beard but, I always tried to put the parent at ease with the explanation of my substitute status. It didn't always work.

In fall of 1976 a full-time position opened up at an after school program where I had substituted a number of times. The kids knew and liked me. The woman who ran the program suggested I apply for the position and when I said I would be happy to do that she said, "Good, then you're hired." Thus, I began my career in Child Care. In the six months before she hired me, working in every conceivable type of child care facility, I had garnered a reputation as being a Good Limit Setter (GLS). Somehow my fear that a child would get hurt on my watch turned into GLS. Turned out to be good for me.

I worked that job until 1979, just before I went into the "Young Vets Program" in the Menlo Park, CA VA. I left because I could no longer stand to go to work. Early on in my full-time status I ran up against children, especially boys, playing "War Games." I knew that I could not stop them. As a matter of fact, trying to squelch those games only made them more appealing. My final solution was to inform the kids that I had one hard and fast rule: they could not shoot me. When asked why I told them that I had been in a real war and it was not fun. A couple of "time outs" and that rule became firm.

I left because one day during a "War Game," in which four boys were going at it hot and heavy, I kept wanting to step in and tell the one who just ran out in the open and shot his "finger gun" with abandon that if he was going to do it that he should do it right because doing it wrong could get him killed, but I didn't. Then one of the boys, the one who instinctively got it right: stay out of sight and show no mercy, came out from behind a cabinet and he was no longer a nine year old in the gym with a stick for a gun pretending to kill and die but a nineteen year old, in a real uniform, a real piece in his hand and he got hit. The kids told me I fell down, started yelling, "No" and crying. My boss was sympathetic but was not upset when I told her I was quitting.

In 1990, my eight year old son and three of his friends were engaged in War Games with Super Soakers in our back yard. One of his friends asked me to join. My son got the "here comes the lecture" look on his face when his friend asked. Much to his surprise I grabbed his super soaker and ran towards the front of the house. Before they could mobilize I had disappeared. They regrouped in the back yard at a loss for what to do. I had climbed onto the roof. I commenced to ambush them to cries of "No fair" and "That is cheating." I just smiled and viewed it as an object lesson, but couldn't stop myself from yelling down, "there are no rules to war, it is not a game." Later my son wanted to know why I always had to spoil the fun.

Gregory Ross: Navy veteran, served on the Gun Line off the coast of Vietnam (1968-69). Graduate of a VA drug, alcohol and PTSD program (1980); a Detox Acupuncturist (1989) and published in Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace.