A first-grade class’s playground at recess. Two children stand face-to-face, feet apart, hands at their sides in a good old Western showdown. Yet instead of gunslingers, the crowd chanting in high-pitched voices through gap-toothed sneers cheer on professional insult traders. The boy hurls an insult towards the girl at a roaring velocity; she takes the blow to her stomach as she swallows the hurt. Then she reloads with a zinger and returns fire.
A high school cafeteria at lunch. Several teenagers enter the ring, but it’s a ring created by their friends, enemies, and frenemies, and the match about to be fought is one of jeers and comebacks striking, making contact with spirits rather than skin.
A slur in the street whistles through the air. A sniper ambush opens fire as a barb is sent ricocheting across a workspace. A crushing assault rains down on an enemy civilian as a school corridor crackles with the torments of a brigade of bullies.
But there are no scars, no debris, no corpses or embers left on the battlefield to burn away their flesh. Because while in other parts of the same world, rifles are thrust into tiny hands, explosions happen just around the corner, and rockets replace raindrops, we arm ourselves with small, meek words. Not so far away from us, sticks and stones breaking bones is an everyday reality. Fallen loved ones, decimated homes, leveled cities, and we have the pinprick power of words.
Yet the stinging, piercing, searing, crushing pain of them is enough to make a child lift a weapon into his unscathed arms, push it back against his un (synonym) shoulder, and loose hell upon his peers.
Hatred breeds evil. But hatred takes many forms.