Mall Shooter

I was at the mall the other day in the big play area the have for kids to run around in. It was kind of nice. Padded floors. Happy children. Stuff to climb on.

There were two boys there, probably about 5 or 6 years old, careening about and having a merry ol' time. They looked like normal young boys. But then without provocation, one of the boys paused, turned to Baby J, cocked an imaginary rifle, and blasted her with imaginary ammunition.

Now, those of you who read Dawn of the Dad regularly know that I'm pretty good at sifting through the details of a story to find a deeper metaphor or a nifty little moral. But today, I've got nothing. I have no clue what lesson we can learn from the events of the day. Maybe it's that boys naturally want to shoot things - like babies. Or perhaps it was that our culture is utterly violence soaked. Maybe it's that young kids shouldn't play violent video games where they can role play killing things.

I don't know.

Whatever the underlying message here, I was deeply disturbed abd though his mother scolded him appropriately I'll probably remain creeped out over this for quite some time.

Listening To: Paniots Nine by Joe Maneri