What is behind “David’s” slingshot?
Many centuries ago small, young David bested giant Goliath using a sling shot against sword and armour. This is an heroic story at the route of both Judaism and Christianity. Writer Malcolm Gladwell exposes the possible, if not likely, fallacies in this story. The main one was that David “brought a gun to a knife fight”.
Gladwell’s contention is that all assembled warriors looking on realized immediately that it was not a fair fight, but favoured David. Most people now, maybe then, fail to appreciate how deadly a sling is in the hands of somebody who knows how to use it. Goliath’s size and strength advantage were never going to be part of this clash. If one was to categorize the event it was not a triumph of bravery, but maybe smarts.
Had David showed up with a bow and arrow against a swordsman, most would have readily recognized the disparity.
As a child of 11 or 12, I played around with a sling made from two shoelaces and a piece of leather between them. A student, two years older than I, had brought one to school and was flinging rocks much farther than we had imagined. I became skilled enough to hurl rocks quite a distance, but never persisted long enough to incorporate accuracy. Of course showing up at school and doing such a thing now, would have prompted a North American wide news story. Certainly at least as newsy, if not as dangerous, as a gun.
Since my childhood, almost the only reference I have seen of use of a slingshot was in Jean Auel’s book ‘Clan of the Cave Bear”.
However, today I saw someone using one and of all places, the tennis practice court. For several months on the concrete wall, there has been a two foot square “box” with an “X” across it demarcated in masking tape. It is about four feet above the ground. I had wondered who placed it and why. It might have been a reasonable target to shoot hockey pucks at, but I resisted not wanting to blemish the new paint with black marks, but I throw a lacrosse ball at it.
The slinger, Craig, confessed that he was the one who placed the “target”. He had put it up and taken it down after each use, until a tennis player asked him to leave it. They use it as a target.
He explained to me that his favourite sports, along with martial arts, are anything with a target, in his case that includes archery and axe throwing, along with slinging. At about fifty feet with the sling, he estimates he can hit the target about seven of 10 tries. Recently he had an “I did it moment” not unlike catching a fly with chop sticks and it was caught on video. He hit a moving tennis ball with one he slung. While he was trying to do it, it wasn’t with the expectation that he actually would.
He slings tennis balls, so can’t be accused of having a “dangerous weapon”. Although in the fall, he has used chestnuts.
He tried my lacrosse ball, which was more dangerous, and he vowed not to get in front of its rebound. He imagined that his shoulder would get sore slinging something that heavy more than 20 times.
Now back to David, he elaborated that David’s weapon was “a sling that utilized a stick to release the stone”.
He said there are places around the Mediterranean, where young children learn how to use the sling as early as five and old men with most physical skills failing can still be deadly with a sling. It may still be used for small game hunting.
In his 50s, Craig has been using the sling for a couple of years and practices two or three times a week, as time permits.
His sling is woven out of a modern exotic cord. The name escapes me. The strands and pouch are all made with the weaving of half a dozen of these cords. It costs around $200 and would take about three hours to make.
