I Found A Grenade Under My Bed

I found a plastic grenade under my bed the other morning. And right outside my bedroom door there's a sentry parked in a desert camo jeep -- an African American with a broad chest and silver dog tags around his neck showing off his gorgeous brown skin. His broad chest must measure almost 3 inches across. He's my son's G.I. Joe. We call him Carter. On the passenger seat next to him is a big rubber band ball my son made for him to play with, except it's about half his size.

This G.I.Joe doll we call Carter is a marine from the Vietnam War, or he was when we bought him and came with a chainsaw and a bunch of guns -- the former for cutting through bamboo and the later for shooting Vietnamese snipers. But we bought him a beach outfit on a card in case he was feeling retro and wanted to go to Iwo Jima for the weekend. My son at 7 years old is proud of his fighting force -- a Marine from Vietnam and a Radio Control Man who broadcast the first alert at Pearl Harbor. They both get along fine, hardly notice they aren't from the same wars -- they even share outfits and boots, although the Pearl Harbor man is reluctant to let me, my son, or the Vietname Marine named Carter touch his radioset.

Anyway when I foudn this plastic grenade under my bed early the other morning, it was a little shocking now that we're really at war. I started to think about whether I had erred as a mom, letting my son even buy military toys and guns. We live in a fairly liberal community and they are very anti-gun around here. We live in the hotbed of the Revolutionary War -- Lexington and Concord Mass area -- and they called me last year to come get a gun my son had brought to school -- I thought "Geez, has my kid turned into some rap artist or something?" Well, not to worry, it was a musket. He'd turned into a patriot, you could say.

It's hard to know what to think now in a time of war. Hard to tell our kids what to think. Hard to know anything anymore, except I took the grenade out from under my bed and put it back in the toy box. It made me nervous.