My daughter ambles away from the little boy carrying two toy guns and a toy crossbow in a tiny toy holster, calling \u201cHey, hey\u201d to her at the playground beside the bay. I usually encourage her to introduce herself, explain what she\u2019s doing and invite other kids to join in, but today I don\u2019t. I let her climb the rope web, pretend to drive the wheel of the play structure shaped like a pirate ship, and I don\u2019t suggest that she talk to the little boy.<\/p>\n
I look for his mother, but she\u2019s sitting on a bench and holding a big dog on a leash, so I don\u2019t approach her. I assume that if she let her kid run around the playground like that on an average Saturday morning, she was at peace with the message she was sending. Instead, I text to the mom group chat, There\u2019s a kid at the playground decked out like a kiddie militia member and I am extremely uncomfortable.<\/em><\/p>\n I don\u2019t say, Hey, I don\u2019t think she wants to play with those, but if you let me hold your guns, maybe you could climb together<\/em>. I could lay them aside for him, take the weight of being a little boy off his small back in its striped t-shirt. I could, but I don\u2019t, and when he leaves with his mother and their dog, I wonder if anyone ever will.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My daughter ambles away from the little boy carrying two toy guns and a toy crossbow in a tiny toy holster, calling \u201cHey, hey\u201d to her at the playground beside the bay. I usually encourage her to introduce herself, explain what she\u2019s doing and invite other kids to join in, but today I don\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":21099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3529],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-nonfiction","writer-abigail-myers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20600"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21100,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20600\/revisions\/21100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}