A Shovel Can Be Quite the Weapon in the Hands of a Small Child

Generally speaking, I am a non-violent person.

This may be because I have spaghetti noodles for arms and can’t hit a sack of dead kittens without hurting myself.

Regardless, I accepted my weakness a long time ago. (For those who are wondering, my fighting strategy, in case I were ever attacked in a dark, damp alley by a terrifyingly buff man lusting after my blood, involves running. Lots and lots of running.)

So it may come as a shock to you that I have had a few violent experiences throughout my life. I try to think of them as sloppy, excessively painful accidents to make me feel better about my clumsy self… even though sometimes I wonder if, deep down, I’m just a sadistic, evil little psycho.

Hey, it’s not like I TRY to hurt people. Well, except for that one time...

But we’ll ignore that. Violence just happens. NBD. But sometimes it’s just a bit bloodier than others.

Take, for example, the morning that four-year-old me decided that I wanted a peach tree in my yard. I didn’t care that I lived in Illinois, land of corn and soybeans and Abraham Lincoln. I wanted some damn peaches whenever I felt like it, and NOTHING was going to get in my way. 

I refused to let her mockery affect my ambition. So I promptly ignored her as I slurped my peach down to its pit and plotted how exactly I was going to accomplish this.

My first step was obvious: I needed manpower. And since Mom had already made a joke of my life dream, I knew she was useless to me.

I had to seek out my brother.

Brother and I had an interesting relationship growing up. It mainly consisted of me being so annoying and obnoxious you would prefer ripping out your fingernails over getting anywhere close to me, and Brother proceeding to ruthlessly beat me up for being so annoying and obnoxious. It was a rare day when we got along, but I was going to make sure that today was one of those days.

To be honest, it really was very easy to get Brother to cooperate with me. It was all about bargaining my life away.

I believe I was up to four lifetimes of devoted and miserable servitude at this point, but little did he know, I only was capable of ONE lifetime. I had such a brilliant strategy to rope him into doing my dirty work, and it never failed. This time was no exception; my manpower was attained, and step one was complete.

With the peach pit in my hand, Brother and I wandered into the garage and snagged the first tools we could find among the many sharp, dangerous things that we shouldn’t have been climbing over. I grabbed a gardening trowel, chosen for its relative size to me, figuring I would have an easy time with it. Brother found the durable shovel, the one with the square-point metal blade, chosen for its supreme digging capabilities.

We meant business.

We just didn’t take into account that, in order to dig a good hole— no matter how badass we felt with our slammin’, ground-murdering tools— we needed to actually have some strength behind them. Unfortunately, we did not possess said strength, but that wasn’t going to stop us from trying.

Brother and I mercilessly attacked the grass.

After multiple attempts to break through the grass, I realized that we weren't getting anywhere like this. We’d done almost zero damage, and I was already starting to get tired. My trowel was useless to me; I needed a strategy change. Brother couldn’t handle the big shovel. That was obvious. If we were going to accomplish anything, I needed it.

"Can I have the big shovel now?" I asked.

"No."

"Please?"

"No."

"Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease?" I begged.

"No!"

"I’ll be your slave forever?"

"…Fine."

Victory was sweet.

Brother handed me the square shovel, took the trowel for himself, got on his hands and knees and got down to business.

With that shovel in my hands, I knew that I was finally gonna get some damage done. I was powerful with that shovel. I was a force to be reckoned with. Unstoppable. I could taste my infinite supply of peaches with that shovel in hand.

I knew that all I needed was one good dig to break the ground, and then I could really get going. So I closed my eyes tightly, lifted that shovel in the air, as high as my tiny arms could hold it, and slammed it down with all my mighty might.

I felt the shovel make contact; a rush of joy surged through me. YES! YES! YES! PEACHES! YES! And I looked down to see the damage I had made.

From shoulder to hand, his arm was oozing out blood.

…Oops.

Naturally, we acted like this was happening:

Brother screamed and sprinted inside, and I ran behind to watch Mom bandage him up.

For years he blamed me, and I insisted it was an accident, nobody being certain as to how angelically innocent or maliciously violent I really was. The only thing that we could be certain of is that I was willing to do anything for an infinite supply of those damn peaches.

Mmmmm… peaches.