if you give a boy a musket

My sister has two sons, and I love them. They are cute and they are funny. Of course, they do act up sometimes, but it's easy to see beyond their occasional wayward behavior and adore them anyway. Boys will be boys.

But, they are "mine" - in the sense that they are my nephews, part of my family. In the same way I imagine I would feel about the children (or child...) I would like to have one day - my nephews have my unconditional affection.

Other children, not as much. Show me some kid I don't know making a scene in the grocery store, and my patience is paper thin. I will, without thinking, inevitably give the child a dirty look. It's not fair of me, but it's the truth. And occassionally, I have an encounter with bad kids that disgusts me so deeply, I'm tempted to take two birth control pills in one day.

Throughout the summer there are day camps for elementary-aged children at the museum where I work. I never cross paths with these groups on most days, but on Friday I decided to take a walk - leave the office and stroll across the campus, get a little sunshine, see what those cute kids are up to.

As I approached the area where I knew the campers were, I heard a steady stream of shrieking, screaming without pause. The kids were getting a lesson in how soldiers during the civil war might have used a musket (it's a history museum - which I guess makes teaching 9 year-olds how to handle a firearm somehow make sense....) It was a group of about ten kids, all seemingly under age 12 and by the time I got close enough to really see what was going on, the kids had total control. Their camp teacher - a chubby college guy wearing a Confederate soldier costume about 3 sizes too small - had dropped his musket and was just yelling at the kids to sit down, pleading with them to pay attention to him. The kids had tuned him out completely, kids running in every direction out of their minds. One bigger boy had a toy musket in his hand, chasing the others. He kept calling one of the other kids a "dumbass". I turned around, and hauled it in the other direction as if I was abandoning a crime scene - the echo of children's laughter and profanity fading softly into the distance.

I visited my nephews this weekend, and my love of kids was renewed. We had a good time and I enjoyed how well-behaved they were. But then again, they didn't have muskets.