LITTLE BOYS AND STICKS

     I like to observe behavior, particularly when it is indicative of our basic nature.  We were at some friends' house yesterday, and each of the three couples there has a boy in the age range from 6 to 7.  As boys will do, the three immediately began to play.  In a very few minutes, each of he three boys had picked up a stick.  They weren't being aggressive with each other or anything, just playing with the sticks.  One of the boys' dads commented, "Did you notice how all boys like to play with sticks?"  He's right.  Not that some little girls might not like to play with sticks, but with boys, it seems almost universal.  As with everything in these posts, this is my own opinion.  I'm not offering any statistical evidence for this, but I wonder if boys are, deep in their 2 million years old psyches, programmed to use sticks.  If you think about it, sticks were likely the original equalizers for our ancestors.  How many times did our relatives lost in the mists of antiquity pick up a stick or a branch to fend off a predator or to defend himself or his family from others.   Most of the early weapons that were made consisted of some combination of sticks and/or rocks.  Makes you think that we're not really that far removed from our roots.