My kid and her neighbor friend are reading books on their tablets in her room when I hear a kids voice shouting FBI open up!! From my downstairs entryway. It’s Evan and another neighbor kid I’m less familiar with named Sammi , toting around their very large assault rifle looking play guns that shoot water bbs. Their looking for the little boy upstairs and the Sammi kid says to me “Tell them to come down or we’ll shoot them with real bullets!” Evans smirking behind him.
I say No sternly and whatever my face says, the kid alerts his eyes from it in a fearful manner. The kid upstairs is shouting down that he doesn’t want to play because of the guns and because they’re mean to him. I tell them that they can play upstairs if they leave the guns behind but they loose interest after that and continue to play outside with their guns the remainder of the day.
I bring the incident up to the moms later. The gun addicts mom says there’s not much she can do because he buys the guns with his own money and the other kids not hers, I mention maybe just keeping the responsibility talks going and send her off with a box of food from my pantry because my mom hauled up way too much food for us to eat by ourselves in good time.
The second half of the day was much improved with a return to the movie theater for TMNT Mutant Mayhem. I love it, I’m laughing so hard I’m crying and I remember how I got into the arts in the first place.
My kid sings three non blondes the whole way home and it feels like a naustalgic joke and revival I get to share with all the other buddies that grew up liking the same things that I did.