Bad Guys

Ugh, so so tired… so many posts floating in head, none of which have to do with crafting, which might be a relief to some you!

They are, in no particular order: Korea Trip = wonderful – what the hell am i going to do with my life – budgeting – why are there still so few women in law – why is my cat so annoying etc. etc. etc. Brain is far too far gone to be coherent about any of those but perhaps I will come back to them some day in between stories of what I’ve made.

Bedtime routine has become enjoyable lately. For the most part I no longer dread wrestling one child into pajamas while the other cries inconsolably. Instead there are books, laughter, and two tired children who usually fall asleep pretty quickly. And there’s always a cuddle – the cuddle is mandatory. Tonight P had lots of questions about bad guys before he went to bed. It’s obviously a topic rolling around in his mind lately, which is probably my fault. After a high-profile kidnapping recently we listened to a few news stories together and I mentioned about bad people. In my heightened news-induced paranoia, I couldn’t resit throwing in some “lessons” about getting away from bad people, even though the more logical part of my brain thinks that at this age “stranger danger” lessons are highly ineffective. For one thing, it’s highly unlikely a stranger would hurt him… more likely someone he knows, god forbid. And second, I’m guessing really evil strangers have very effective ways of making themselves familiar so the kid doesn’t think they are a stranger – e.g. come check out my cute puppy!

But my few comments, and the news story, have both been percolating in his little noggin. In our most recent chats, I have tried to emphasise that there are few real bad people; mostly just good people who do bad things. And also I remind him that it’s my job to protect him from those people. I don’t want it all resting on his wee shoulders. But he still had several questions before he went to bed. I wish I had videotaped them all as he was clearly really chewing over the information.

Some of them, with an abbreviated form of my answer, were:
(1) Why bad guys stole things? (Usually for money)
(2) Why some people are bad? (Lots of reasons; maybe their parents weren’t very good to them, or maybe they were just born that way. But most people are good.)
(3) Why their parents weren’t very good to them? (Maybe they didn’t know how to be good parents)
(4) Do bad guys steal babies? (Pause – yes. but not very often because most people don’t want other people’s babies.)
(5) Why bad guys don’t want other people’s babies? (Because babies are noisy and fussy and a lot of work.)
(6) Can a bad guy carry a whole bed like this one? (No – it would take a lot of bad guys to carry a bed. (His bed really is very heavy))
(7) Do bad guys come out at night? (Not usually.)
(8) Why they don’t come out at night? (They’re tired, just like regular people. And they have to do chores.)

He decided that if he saw a bad guy, he would call the police. If he saw two, he would call two police. Three, three police. And if he saw a hundred, well, obviously he’d call a hundred police. He seemed quite pleased with that and grinned. He told me he and the police would “work together.” Oh, and he would smack the bad guy in the penis. Not sure where that came from really, but it could be effective so I didn’t dissuade him.