Firing Squad

Amidst my frantic, coffee-induced French toast making this morning, I heard the most disturbing story as NPR blared in the background. In Utah, an inmate on death-row was executed by firing squad, this being his preferred method of extermination. What the what? Checking to make sure I indeed woke up in the right century, I stood motionless, spatula in hand, only to hear the latest reports of BP's oil spill in the Gulf. Yep, right year; wrong direction.

I've always hated guns myself--they seem so barbaric and loud. An obscene penis extension that somehow seemed below me, besides, when I was seven my grandma told me driving down the road in her VW Rabbit that my bio-dad had shot himself. How was I to ever appreciate firearms? You think you have everything figured out before parenthood. As if I could definitively check the boxes, "For Peace" and "Against Guns." Easy, this would be the basic philosophy from which I raised my highly in-tuned, balanced boy. But then came Iron Will.

Please don't get me wrong, my son is not a psychopath...he can be very loving and perceptive at times, AND he loves guns (a statement I thought I'd never proclaim, I'm not far from an NRA bumper sticker at this point). My husband, Billy, and I vowed not to let our son watch violent shows and saw our pre-children abode decorated with art, free of plastic noise-makers, and above all, toy guns. We buy organic food, I breastfed, we watch independent films. But I realized none of this mattered the day my son picked up a Certified Organic sweet potato from Whole Foods and said he was going to shoot me with it.

This was not the last of these freakishly sadistic statements. We've heard, "Give me chocolate or I will destroy you, Mom!" as tiny finger-guns were aggressively fired at my face. His soft jaw becomes uncomfortably obtuse when he juts it out to accompany his finger artillery proclaiming, "I'll shoot you cars if you don't move out of our way," from the backseat of the car. While driving the other day I was completely unaware that he was rapidly firing at any object that came in our path: stop signs, street lights, puppies, old ladies... Do we have a problem here?

What is it with boys' intrinsic gravitational pull toward weapons? I've even found myself pushing the sword as a diversion for the gun (I dunno, it seems more noble). My mom thinks it's hysterical, the irony of her grandson possibly joining the Marines or something someday. She actually bought him a rabbit pelt and discussed hunting like some back-woods granny in a coon-skin cap. At this rate, my hands are up in exasperated surrender. Fire a way little man.