If the fun police visited my house they would cart me away and lock me up.
Just a quick glance around would be enough for a warrant.
We have Nerf guns and water pistols, potato guns and a metal ‘cap’ rifle that makes our dog hide behind me when my sons shoot the wretched thing.
We have water balloons and packets of ‘throw downs’ – now named ‘Pop Pops'.. all items deemed contraband by the Federal Council of Agricultural Societies.
The who? You might be asking...
The Federal Council of Agricultural Societies. They are the folk who run the local agricultural shows around Australia and they have announced a ban on anything fun for kids certain toys at their esteemed family shows.
The ban, as reported in The Daily Telegraph, includes water bombs, water pistols, potato guns, cap pistols, “lurid” playing cards, Zippo lighters, stink bombs, bouncing beans, pressure pack snow and silly string.
Now “lurid” playing cards and Zippo lighters aside (for now) the above list looks to me like my eight-year-old son’s fantasy birthday list. Its what his dreams are made of.
Silly string. Fart bombs. A cap gun that actually makes a tiny little bang when you pull the trigger.
What jolly good fun.
But not if you are the Federal Council of Agricultural Societies who have instead ruled that such frivolities have no place in the lives of eight-year old boys.
NSW Agricultural Societies Council president Tim O’Brien told News Limited that most items, such as lasers and “guns that shoot potato peel”, were banned on safety grounds.
“It could shoot another kid in the eye,” Mr O’Brien said.
Imagine that? Little boys out and about in fresh air not shooting at something on a screen but teeny tiny pellets of vegetable peelings.
Federal Agricultural Societies president Bill Trend told News Limited the list was based on safety risks, but conceded some items were more about the sensitivities of fellow guests saying the horn ban was about them being “a nuisance”.
“You know what it’s like at the cricket or football, it just drives everyone up the wall.”
I can only imagine what Mr O’Brien and Mr Trend would have thought if they’d been at our local park last weekend where ten eight-year-olds divided into teams for a Nerf and Water balloon battle.
There were dangerously soft bullets flying around, risk filled balloons filled with risky water.
They would have fainted from the thought of the inherent danger involved in allowing children to have fun.
(Not to mention the nuisance from the sound of their hollers of joy.)
A few years ago my kids and I went to one of these agricultural shows, it was in a semi-rural suburb about half-an-hour away.
There were pony rides and a rickety Ferris Wheel, women selling dog leads and small yellow ducklings you could pick up. There was a competition to name a baby piglet and a gaggle of young girls competing in a dressage event I couldn’t understand.
The Federal Council of Agricultural Societies had done a wonderful job, the air was filled with the scent of old-grease from the Dagwood dog truck mixed with cow poo and the sounds of kids begging their parents for one more turn on the flying saucers.
When I was fed up and tired and feeling nauseous from the tinny carnival music I bribed my three kids with the lure of a show bag to get them home.
My daughter, then just three, lit up with delight at the Pony bag, complete with three neon ponies and a set of combs to brush their manes.
My two sons, aged then five and seven longingly looked at the Army bag. It came with camouflage gear, an army bucket hat, a bullet belt, a Camouflage Machine Gun, a plastic AK47 rifle? and a cap pistol. The guns were loud and made terrible clicking noises meant to scare the enemy off to hide in the bathroom with headphones, podcast blaring to drown out the sound.
I hesitated before I let them have it – the whole should you let your kids play with toy plastic guns consideration - but I was desperate and would have done anything to leave.
The toys came out of the cardboard the minute they were handed over and for about three minutes I wondered if I had done the right thing.
Until one by one - in the ten minutes it took to wade through the car park - each plastic rifle broke.
What I had anticipated would have been a journey home filled with the sound of toy guns instead turned into the sound of small boys weeping about their broken toys.
That’s what the Federal Council of Agricultural Societies need to keep in mind.
It doesn’t matter if they allow these ‘dangerous contraband’ goods to be sold. They only last two minutes anyway before they break.
The real danger here is to the sanity of a parent listening to their children screeching 'I WANT ANOTHER ONE' for 30 minutes.
