Sons as Teachers: An Introduction Patricia StevensIt is the late 1980s, an unseasonably hot Saturday afternoon in May, with only a few weeks left in the school year. A water war is about to erupt in my backyard. Six boys ranging in age from ten to thirteen are dividing into two opposing groups. My sons, one on each side, will use their own personal rivalry to keep the battles escalating.Before the first shot is fired, however, the boys sit in a shady spot on the grass and draw up the rules of conduct. They choose weapons. Each side has access to two battery-powered plastic Uzi's that can shoot a stream of water for a distance of twenty feet or more. They have a few ordinary water pistols and these, they decide, are acceptable weapons, though for a conflict of this magnitude, nearly obsolete.

Sitting at the dining room table near the open window that faces the backyard, I can hear their entire operating plan as I write out checks to pay the bills. Soon, my older son appears inside the house and begins rooting around in both of our junk drawers. "Do we have any balloons?" he asks. But before I can answer, he has opened the hall closet and is rummaging through a box on the floor."No balloons in there," I say."Advertiserbags," he says excitedly. Though his younger brother no longer delivers the free weekly paper filled with classifieds to every house in the neighborhood, we still have a large cache of the very thin clear plastic bags that had been an essential part of the paper route. My son runs into the bathroom, half fills one of the bags, and ties off the open end.

Yes!It holds water but is thin enough to break on contact. Once he is outside again, another arms control agreement is carefully negotiated. Each side is limited to a specific number of preloadedAdvertiserwater bombs, but all combatants can refill their Uzi's and water pistols from strategically placed buckets at any time. There are also boundaries: our entire front and back yard; another boy's yard, which is two doors down; the unpaved alley that runs behind the houses on our side of the street.After the boys fill the buckets and all their weapons from the hose in the backyard, they go off to their separate bases of operation, where they spend another fifteen minutes planning strategy. Then the war begins -- the shouting, running, hiding, shrieking, and the splattering of water bombs -- and soon all six boys are wearing soppy shorts, clinging T-shirts, and dripping hair. By this time I am at the window taking in as much of the war as I can. I feel the joy of seeing them completely delighted and absorbed by child's play on this perfect day, but I also feel more than just a physical distance as I stand back and watch this world of boys.

A water war was something that I had clearly missed as a child. If my older brother's friends had tried to organize such a match, I would have either been excluded from it or quickly overpowered. If there were battles in our girl world, my friends and I fought them either with words or calculated silence. If we squabbled too long or if someone ended up in tears, my mother would use her dictatorial powers to call off the war and send the other girls home. It never occurred to my friends and me that we might fight for fun, that we would admit to a battle of any kind.* * *That day in May marked the first of several backyard water wars, but it was also the first time I had consciously envied my sons' obvious "otherness." Although before that time I had certainly admired what I saw as their boyness -- both sons at two and three fearlessly racing their Big Wheels down our steep driveway; Jeremy at nine building a tree fort completely without adult interference; Jordan spending hours each day after school fishing for crawdads in the creek -- I had little experience with, or interest in, any of these activities myself. Although I am certain there were girls from my gen.