Toy Soldiers

Yesterday, though it took me a lot of effort especially considering I had quite a long and busy week, I foraged the entire shopping centre for a packet of toy soldiers, and when I finally found the shop that sold them, I felt disheartened.

There they were, set at a price of two dollars, crammed in a small plastic container, plastic faces connected to plastic arses and vice versa. In some instances, soldiers even had tips of guns and grenades shoved in their faces. I do not whatsoever condone the act of war, nor do I condone the act of sending brave young men to foreign lands to slaughter other brave young men in their own homelands for the act of patriotism, though I do condone the playfulness of toy soldiers and the quality these little hardened plastic mounds hold.

Looking around major toy-stores now, all one sees is bright colours, packages still leading children to believe that blu is for boys and pink is for girls and it is not okay for boys to wear tutus in the same way that it is not okay for girls to wear sneakers. Barbie Dolls, Legos, Frisbees and other mindless trinkets and electronics are what occupy a modern-day child's mind and attention, yet these little toy soldiers await a new owner, packed away in the darkest aisle of a store, even ironic in its name: The Reject Shop. 

Two dollars later, I was the proud owner of these toy soldiers. They are not cut-out perfectly, nor are their heads shaped adequately enough in terms of head to body ratio, and nor are they the same colour. I did not care. I need them for an art project, and plus, they will be exciting to fondle whilst placing my piece together. The soldiers each are unique in their own ways - some are carrying grenades, about to throw them, some are holding grenade launchers whilst crouching down, some are on the floor, flat on their stomachs, wielding a long rifle, and some are looking out whilst others are on the phone. 

Their attire even varies. Some are wearing gas masks, and it bothers me that there are only two in the packet of twenty that are - will the rest die off, had there been some sort of plastic gas attack? Some are wearing berets, others large helmets, and others helmets so large all you can make out is a chin. The sizes are different too, but that is probably because their moulds were not all that accurate, hence the compression of some of the soldiers' features. I had to repaint them. They all differed in colour, and the colour was not used to indicate different allies because they all wore different things within their own colour schemes. Now, they all abide by the one uniform granted by one thin layer of dark green paint, and they standby besides the canon and the tank and the helicopter, guarding their barracks and awaiting my commands.

Then it occurred to me: I was playing coward. I was reenacting the duty of a higher authoritative figure when it comes to determining when to wage a war, where to wage a war, who to involve and how long to make it go for. I was in the shoes of the coward who thinks it is okay for young men and women to go out and kill and be killed whilst I sit here choosing them like President Snow from The Hunger Games. 

But then again I would have been a coward had I been born a boy in the era of the first world war. I would have been the pansy version of Wilfred Owen, having been conscripted and forced into a battle of bullets, and I would have written sulky poems which appealed to nobody in particular.