Wednesday, April 08, 2015

G is for Guns

It doesn't matter if you raise your sons on a commune without electricity, 50 miles from the closest village, co-sleep and breast feed them until they are five.
One day your oldest will pick up a slice of seven-grain bread, take a bite out of the bottom right corner, and then tell you that the remaining shape is a gun. Gun? You don't even know where they learned the word.
Then they will proceed to pretend to shoot all their siblings who will all be busy fashioning their own bread artillery.
I hate the notion that boys will be boys, so I'm not going to say that being fascinated with guns is part of boy DNA - deal with it. I was horrified that my sons were interested in guns.
But horrified didn't get me anywhere. So I took a long look at what horrified me. I was okay when they wanted wooden swords and shields. I bought bows and arrows and tacked bulls eyes to bails of hay. We went to the Higgins Armory Museum. Twice. There are actual museums devoted to armory. Who knew? Mothers of sons know.
When my 10 year old was in his Moby Dick phase I let them whittle spears with his pocket knife and then pretend to hunt whales in the front yard - un-politically correct as it was.
It's only guns that I have a problem with. And not all guns. I bought muskets in Lexington after we watched the Revolutionary War reenactment. I'm even okay with guns that shoot rubber bands. And guns made of bread. And guns made of Legos. And sticks that look like guns.
It's hand guns. Toy guns that look like hand guns, even though they are made of bright green or orange plastic, those are the guns I don't want around.
I guess moms will be moms. Deal with it.

6 comments:

T. Powell Coltrin said...

when my son was barely 5 months old, we gave him a plastic white truck. He immediately started making car sounds with his lips. We were amazed. The funny thing is that he to this day, he LOVES cars and motorcycles.

Jennifer Hawes said...

I have two teen boys. They loved guns of every kind when they were young. We taught them gun safety and they are great with them. Teach them young to respect weapons...guns, pocket knives:)

Paula said...

You hit this on the head. When my son was five, he started shooting at me with a fun made of Tinker Toys while I loaded the dishwasher. I was in a bad mood that night and told him how it wasn't nice to shoot at people and that I would prefer he didn't play with guns. His response? "Mom, you do know it's just pretend, right?"

Nick Wilford said...

Kids have a fascination with them. Even my 6-year-old girl has a green plastic one. It's not hers though, it's one of those toys that hangs around for ages and you don't know where it came from. She's very smart though, and knows real ones are very bad!

Lisa said...

I'm with you. Simple as that. Lisa, co-host AtoZ 2015, @ http://www.lisabuiecollard.com

Cindy Falteich said...

Guns. And wars. And now snipers. And he can talk about all of them in great depth, calmly and factually as if discussing the weather and then want me to snuggle with him while he falls asleep. At 16.