All's Quiet on the Western Front

I am not sure how I went from the mom who wouldn't even utter the word, "gun" in the house to the mom who is running some sort of survivalist summer camp, but I have noticed a growing interested in all things guns and war with the boys.

It all started with the slippery slope that is the Xbox.  James Dean preferred shooting aliens in the game "Halo" and Prince somehow convinced me that he would be studying the American Revolution if he was allowed to play "Assassin's Creed."  (insert buzzer sound here)  They are now all gleefully shooting zombie Nazis in some other game.  The joyful sounds of the three of them happily playing together is the only thing that quiets the "Bad Mommy!" mantra ringing in my ears.

In an attempt to get the boys away from screens as much as possible, we bought a ping pong table, badminton set, crochet set, slip and slide, water shooters, not to mention the five cats, two dogs, cow, horse, 1 bunny and 72 chickens that love to play.  All of these have been mildly entertaining, but when the husband came home with a few $10 paint guns he got at a yard sale, they were over the moon.

They play D Day landing for hours.  JD loves to camouflage himself as he crawls commando style through the pasture. Scrappy Doo's elaborate death scenes are truly inspired Method Acting.


Playing with toy guns was never an option in the City.  In the hot weather, neon water guns that looked like they came from the Starship Enterprise were acceptable playground toys, but on the rare occassion that some kid from the Midwest or ironically a peace loving country like Sweden showed up at the playground with a real looking toy gun, we gun hating liberal helicopter moms would herd our precious pacifists away from the little sniper in training with looks of horror and disdain pointed directly at the parents of this future killer.  Of course, the WWF Smackdown our boys participated in was probably a whole lot more dangerous than running around with a toy gun.

The whole gun obsession reached critical mass when James Dean presented the husband and I with several guns he painstakingly researched and recreated using Legos.  We were both speechless at first because on the one hand, they were really good but on the other hand it was really messed up. Trying to be a supportive dad, the husband said, "Wow, that is really good.  I mean, it's not GOOD that you are making guns, but you did a great job."

I now find lego weapons all over the house and the husband has even stashed the paint balls in the bowl where I store my potatoes, because I guess, why would they ever look there.  Perhaps getting shot in the ass with a paintball would be the perfect cure for their love of firearms.

Just to be clear, I would be very happy if they all wanted to take up hunting.  The whole point of moving to the farmette was to be self sustaining and to teach the kids that is far better to eat food you grow, raise, fish, or hunt yourself than it is to buy it at Price Chopper.  It is the romance of guns that kill other people that disturbs me.

I am well aware that banning anything is a sure fire way to make your kid want it that much more, so I decided to embrace their love of guns and war with gusto.

I took Prince shopping for "realistic" looking guns and costumes for the Vietnam War/Alien Invasion movie he is currently writing a script for (PS, it is surprisingly well written so far).  Luckily he stuck to the toy department.  I am not sure if he actually knows they sell real guns at Walmart.

James Dean has been asking a lot of questions about WWI and WWII and why they occurred.  Sadly, I don't remember enough of the backstory to give him truly informed answers so I declared that we would read a variety of books and articles on the subject and maybe watch a few documentaries or movies."  Prince rolled his eyes and groaned upon hearing this.

"What?" I asked incredulously.

"You are just going to read a sentence and then talk on and on about why war is bad."

"No I won't."

Little does he know that many of the movies and books I choose such as Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States  and "All's Quiet on the Western Front" will not require my usual running commentary.  I also think that no study of World War II is complete without reading about the internment of Japanese Americans.  I learned nothing about this as a kid in school.  My godfather sent me an anthology of stories for young people for my 12th birthday and I still remember to this day reading in disbelief about a young girl in CA who lived in a camp.

Perhaps my evil plan to take the romance out of guns with reverse psychology will fail miserably and the 3 Muskateers will be back to killing zombies in Rio with aplomb, but hopefully we will all learn a little something and at the very least, the boys will have plenty of popcorn bowl memories of what a wack job their mother is.