I have three daughters. They are moody and emotional but relatively non-violent unless they are playing with dolls together in which case they fight like cats. It actually reminds me of the news the day after Thanksgiving. Some woman has to have the toy, dress, whatever and decks some other woman. I guess they never grow out of it.
Devin is different. His approach to violence is far more, well, violent. He screams at his sisters, “I hate you!”. At least he used to. We threatened to feed him soap so now he says, “I hate …., I don’t like it when you do that.” I’ve been trying to teach him to say, “you vex my soul!”
He’s the first of our kids to make guns out of anything he can find and he frequently ‘shoots’ his sisters and tells them he’s going to ‘kill them’. We don’t let him watch anything but the Disney channel. I’ve not taken him shooting and don’t own a gun. There’s just something in the DNA that comes coded ready to shoot, kill, yell, jump, hunt…..
Anyway, I’m in my office today coding my brains out ‘cause that what I do all day when all of a sudden I hear a loud explosion and then a boom. Being the good dad that I am I yell, “what the hell?!!!” and run upstairs. Devin has found the latest box of junk we ordered from Amazon and is jumping on the packaging to make the air packets explode. To boys things that explode are really cool. Boys don’t grow out of that. The explosions just get bigger and more colorful.
Last sunday in church, at full volume Devin screams out “What’s in my pants? What is in my pants?!!!!”
I should have been horrified, but instead I laughed out loud. You can’t imagine how many times I’ve wanted to yell that in the middle of a sermon.