Busted.

Here's the cachet. All this steel and gunpowder, stashed on top of the fridge.  Well, maybe not stashed.  More like...banished.  Yes, our boys are into weapons.  They're into combat, whether it be with a (plastic) sword, gun, laser, light saber or Wii remote.  They like to blow things up real good.  They like to yell "You'll pay for dis!" and "Fire at Will!!" and "You're going to the Doom Dimension!".  They like the Star Wars movies.  Every last violent detail.

All of this is my nightmare.  Not because I'm a girl, so much, but because I'm a pacifist.  I cry when people are mad at me.  I cry when I think people should be mad at me.  I fight like a feeb and  refuse to play contact sports or anything that might make me fall down.  I want peace and am willing to do pretty much anything to achieve it.  So, to have two screaming small people running around the house (fake) shooting at each other and slashing the air,  rogue jedis on crack candy....it's just too much.  I pluck the above weapons out of their hands whenever things get hairy and send them into exile on top of the fridge.  I plop bags of chips on them and forget they exist.  I shrug innocently when the kids can't find their "piece" and their "blaster".  Even their little lego people are packing heat!

I'm a little worried that these two are going to grow up to be maniacal psychos terrorizing the city with pirate pistols from Disneyland (see above) or worse.  Maybe they'll even start hunting fowl and game.  While living in LA, I visited a hypnotherapist to help me deal with some important life issues.  During one session I expressed concern about my son's need to run around pretending he was shooting a gun, which was actually a curved piece of wooden train track.  I felt that this could escalate and he would scare all his little girlfriends right out of his life.  Matt laughed a little.  Patiently, he explained that as a child he'd careen around with his toy guns playing Cops & Robbers, Cowboys & First Nations People with the best of them...and has grown up to do yoga for 2 hours a day and study Transcendental Meditation.  Truly, he's about as gentle as they get. Sigh.  l guess I should give those machines of menace back over to the kids, and surrender all the nerf darts that I've hidden in my sock drawer.  Soon as my welts are gone...