It’s amazing how imaginative young boys can be. Especially when it comes to weaponry. As parents we’ve tried very hard to limit our boys’ exposure to guns and violence when they were young but they still innately gravitated toward armed conflict. Even if you don’t succumb to the purchase of toy weapons, they will invent their own using just about any ordinary object. I’ve learned this the hard way.
At any given moment you can find sticks and branches of various lengths around the perimeter of our yard. The first time I noticed this I went around gathering them up assuming they were offerings from the firewood fairy. I learned later as we roasted marshmallows by the fire that I had destroyed my youngest son’s arsenal of guns. Big mistake.
Fortunately, not all weapons of mass imagination are decoys of nature. A lot of the toys in the toy box work just fine providing they are long and narrow enough. Even my three-year-old nephew has this ability and demonstrates it quite well. Just yesterday he marched around our house blasting away his older cousins with a blue plastic hockey stick. Beyoo! Beyoo!