Wooden swords have surfaced again and again this week and so hello to wooden swords. I have two, one slender with a handle of burnished gold paint, the other fat and multi-edged with glass gems of varying color and brokenness. Both are splintered and dented by years of neighborhood and Ren Fest battle.

Now I use the swords for shoulder stretches, teasing cats, and loosening stuck hinges. My sword dance is very different from the militaristic exercises around the world.

The swords are not really mine but I have custody of them while their true owners are away. My boys are leaving, one tomorrow, the other in August. I need my swords, and they need their mother to treasure them and keep them safe. Or perhaps keep them battle-ready.

We think of swords as weapons, that the wooden ones are merely play replicas of the real metal ones. What if instead play swords predate the metal ones? Children’s stick battles must have been fought millenia before the forging of metal. Besides, are the steel blades with blood gutters really an improvement? Stick swords cause far less heartbreak and gore. Stick swords bring joy.

Well. En garde my dears. I won’t slice or dice you with one of these, but I may dazzle, bruise, or hypnotize you.

And from Rob Brezsny:
In ancient Rome, gladiator contests were as popular as today's football games. The warriors back then were not hired heroes as they are now, however. They were slaves or convicts who were forced to fight. Even if they won, they were usually required to return and risk their lives another day. Now and then a grizzled veteran of countless struggles-to-the-death was awarded with the ultimate prize: a wooden sword, symbolizing the end of his role as a gladiator and the beginning of his life as a free man. I'm telling you this because I believe you have earned your own personal equivalent of the wooden sword.