My dad always bought me GI Joes when I was little. I mean, I had stuffed animals and all that good stuff, but when it came to mock-human play things, I had GI Joes instead of Barbies. Perhaps he had secretly hoped for a son, but when I popped out, he figured he would treat me like the son he always wanted. But regardless, I was surrounded with GI Joes.
Let me tell you about the drama of my GI Joes.
I was in love with Beach Head. Beach Head was in luurve with Lady Jaye. When all the others would take the tank out for missions, Beach Head and Lady Jaye would be back at the base secretly doing what birds and bees and monkeys at the zoo do (at 7 years old, I wasn’t sure what that was other than that they would happily lie on top of each other). But Cobra’s men would always ambush the base and kidnap the two. Cobra would leave Lady Jaye to the whim of his rogue men while he marched Beach Head off to a secluded spot behind the mountains to “interrogate” him, but in truth, he was torturing Beach Head because he was in love with him and wanted him to consummate that love. But of course, the other Joes would come in and save the day just in time.
Is this what happens when parents give their children gender-confusing role-playing toys? That the toys become promiscuous and dabble in gang bang, S&M and homosexual practices? Or is this proof that I am actually a crack baby? And what kind of dramas might have been played out had I been surrounded by an estrogen clan of Barbies and a lone anatomically-incorrect Ken?
Stiff-jointed, libidinous action figures have created a monster of me.