Focus, Focus, Focus

It's hard to keep Ian focused right now. I think I've mentioned the whole Air-Soft Gun/War thing around here. Every weekend they (all young boys in Granby around the age of 13 whose parents are insane enough to allow this activity) plan these Air-Soft Wars. Last weekend they took place at our house.

We live out a bit from the town, which is relative considering Granby is "out a bit" from anything. At any rate, apparently it's a great place to have these wars. We have an abandoned gravel pit across from us, we have Skip's Reservoir, we have the barn, we have 200 acres of sagebrush, trees, hills, dips in the ground, old equipment (including a grain silo that looks like a rocket), and a creek. What better place to stage a fake war?

It's a little bit disconcerting for me. I'm having a difficult time, morally, ethically and politically with Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't like hunting. I'm afraid of guns. I don't like violence. I hate video games, the movie Jackass and people who wear camo.

I'm  a bit out of place in Granby where 90% of the trucks (no one drives cars around here, myself included) have a rifle rack, where you see bumper stickers that read "Obama can have my guns...over my dead body" and to not hunt makes me suspect, or at the very least, a Democrat.

So how do boys learn the difference between pretend wars and real wars? Between air-soft pellets and real bullets? Between video games killing and real killing?

When my oldest boy, Jordan was a toddler, I told everyone within shouting distance, that they were not, under any circumstances, to buy Jordan anything that resembled a gun. Nothing, nada, zilch. No one did. So, Jordan made guns out of sticks and pieces of kindling and his finger. Jordan, one day in Newberrys (which is no longer) stood in front of the pink girl-toy aisle (he was five) and said, "Yuck, girls, they have such wimpy toys." 

I'm beginning to think Ian and Jordan and all people with male DNA are programmed to be aggressive. They like motorcycles and ATVs and games with controls that look like guns and loud noises and body jokes. They do not like kittens and pink diaries and building relationships.

There's only so much I can control and maybe my husband is right. If we teach him the right way then he won't do wrong. Which means if they're going to have an Air-Soft war, they might as well have it here where I can feed the boys brownies and milk afterwards and ask how it went.