Holy bullets

I know this is not such a good time to be thinking about guns. Or, maybe this is a really important time to be thinking about guns. The bean is a little obsessed. Ok, maybe not OBSESSED, but he is...highly preoccupied with the idea of guns. Making them, using them, defending them. I am feeling a little beaten down.

When the babies were little, I thought, ho! They are not so different, these boy and girl babies. They cry the same and they eat the same and they poop in their diapers the same. They enjoy taking baths and snuggling. They appear to enjoy it when I read to them and they make me feel loved and needed and they're both really, really scrumptious. What's all this shit about boys and girls being so different? People are crazy and sexist and I am totally buying a doll for my little boy and he is going to love it.

Ok, so he got the doll. Did he love it? The short answer is: No. Didn't appear to hate it, just was fairly indifferent. Meh, it's a soft thing for me to play with. Got any legos?

So the legos came. And trucks and trains and trucks and cars and trucks. We gave Peanut some cars and trucks as well and she reacted in a manner similar to that of the Bean's upon receiving the doll. Meh, these are hard and have edges. Where's my doll?

So! I thought. They really are different, these boy and girl babies. They like different things when they get big enough to have opinions. Interesting.

And then came the guns.

I thought that this was a battle I was totally going to win. I'm not sure why I thought that because I had no battle plan and my methods were shakey. But I would not bring a toy gun into the house. Not a single water pistol would cross the threshold. At this point, any parent with a boy could probably have told me that I was waisting my time. In fact, I remember my parents having a similar dilemma. My brother loved playing with guns and although my mom never let a toy gun in the house, he found things that substituted. Sticks. Other toys. Toilet paper rolls. More sticks. And then one day at the park, joy of joys, he found a gun that had been hand carved out of a piece of wood. It was crude, but oddly endearing. My mom sighed and relented. After that I don't really remember if it was an issue anymore. We just had toy guns and they were played with and somehow we survived. He even got a b.b. gun one year for Christmas. I tried it. It was fun.

So, yes, the Bean began making finger guns, lego guns, block guns, truck guns--anything that could possibly be aimed at you was a gun. And then he said "I'm shooting you, I'm killing you, you're dead." And I would sigh and say that we didn't play that, it wasn't friendly. And he kept on doing it. One day, I said, Only guns that shoot Love and Happiness are allowed in my house. Guns with bullets are not.

The Bean looked at me.

He walked away.

He came back a little later with a really fucking huge lego cannon and aimed it at me and made spitty machine gun noises.

I said, Remember what I said? No bullets!

He said, "It's not bullets! I'm shooting Love and Happiness at you! Pow pow, I love you! Some of my bullets are made of kisses even!"

That was nice.