Reflections on water gun warfare

The route my dad's bike buddies take is almost a complete tour of my childhood. There's the first school I attended. There is the path where I wanted to see what frost bite felt like if my alibi holds or where I scared myself into thinking the neighbors house was haunted. There's the park with the penguin. The slide that smelled like urine is sealed off, but somehow the urine smell remains, at least in my nasal cavity. There's the tumbleweed blowing by the joint where Showbiz pizza once rocked the birthday circuit and now only Sears and the softer side of empty live. There's where John resided with his Raleigh dirt bike long before he became Johnny. It had been a year and a half since I'd been to KC. The old sites still conjured up memories and the cleaning adventure down memory lane added to the misty water colors, but more than ever KC no longer felt much like my town. It wasn't entirely clear when I had the pleasure of the company of some good college friends who I see far too often on Facebook and not nearly enough in real life. Nor was it obvious as I ran the old high school training runs with my sister and then again on my own.

My long absence was clearest to me while on the road. It took my mental map longer than the GPS to figure out where I was headed. I struggled to recall the names of roads I once traveled often. Were there always this many trucks here? Most disconnecting of all was my re-entry into the greater metropolitan area after a visit to rural MO. As the outlines of familiarity, the places that would have once signaled the approach of home and the satisfying finish of a trip, started to appear on the horizon, my mind whirred and clicked. It searched to connect home and formerly familiar sites. Instead of connecting to KC, I flashed to Maryland and Virginia. I thought of the return trips from many Ultimate tournaments and a few driving vacations in the east. The satisfying finish couldn't slide into place. Instead, I allowed the GPS to take me on in to a place that was once so clearly defined as home.

We'd gone canoeing. It's a more patient past time than I've allowed myself time for lately. The trip was with the canoe club I grew up with. Some of the long time members that I remember as a kid have passed on, but a few remain. I was surprised to find out that one would be celebrating eighty this year. He couldn't have aged all these years while I did. I'm sure he thought the same of me. That wasn't the only time warp. With my sister on the trip, a few moments felt like they did so long ago. Having Bruce there made me look around fully expecting to see the others from our age group- Molly, Emily, Sarah. They weren't there, though their families were. Their parents spoke of grandkids, my friends' kids. Weren't we still ten or no more than fifteen? My own young niece was on her first canoe trip, while her little sister had her first camping experience. I'd brought C and finally introduced her to Spam after five years of promises. So they and my cousin and her boyfriend in the Navy reminded me that, no, we weren't still ten, and yet when the water guns came out, maybe we weren't so far from then.

The water guns have changed. The pace of war has changed. When I was a boy, I say while I stroke my beard, using a water gun on a canoe trip was more about stealth. It took a sneak attack with a hand held gun to cause a rain-drop like disturbance. It was moist annoyance and the danger of a vicious counter-attack paddle splash was always a very real concern. The evolution is clear as super soakers replaced handhelds adding volume and distance, and now in this day and age, which probably arrived seven or so years ago, the water cannon emerges as the weapon of choice. The water cannon takes two hands to fire. It takes a big drink to load and a big push to spray. The stream is hose-like. The shooting distance is sizable, too far for most paddle retaliation. The catch is that the reloading time is obscene. It's one long shot and done. I imagine that a good army of canoeists must have the discipline of the Brits in the eighteenth century. Build the line, fire the musket, and then take on the opponents fire during reloading. The only hope is a second wave of cover. We did not have that discipline. Water gun warfare has taken a giant step back in speed to acquire more power. It's mutually assured wetness.