Armed

I was exhausted, post Flu, after driving three kids to California during the weekend, when my two youngest and my niece begged for a bedtime story.

Slowly in the dark, I began to spin a tale, a non-fiction piece, actually, knowing it was easier to borrow than to have to create.

Halfway in and gathering steam, I was hearing all these pops and clicks. "What IS that?" I asked (not very nicely).

"A gun," said Rees, eight.

Honestly, I was too tired to get up and turn on the light and see what he was talking about. So I yelled, "Mac!" and my seventeen-year-old brother busted down the bedroom door, to see what I was panicking over.

"Please," I mumbled into my pillow. "Take. The gun. Away. From Rees."

Mac flicked on the light and Rees handed over the busted pellet gun. Then the paint gun. The dart guns. A BB gun. And three toy rifles.

I laughed myself wide awake seeing Mac in the doorway with guns under his arms, pinned to his sides, between his knees.

"What is this?" he said. "An arsenal?"