On boys and broken windows

I have a belief.

I have a lot, but it is one particular belief that I am speaking of.

I have a well-thought out belief that every boy should break a window during his childhood. Or two, or three. But at least, for the sake of being a boy, one window.

I thought that two out of my three boys had broken windows thus far, but after this weekend and some reminiscing and counting, we have a new tally:

Oldest stands at 1.
Middle stands at 1.
Youngest stands at 1, wait a minute, nope, now it's 2.

That's right, all boys are now officially on their way to manhood as they all have broken a window. This last broken window will cost us between $200 and $300 because we can't just board it up like we've done on our two broken garage windows. Nope, this is a neighbor's window that he SHOT out. Remember my hating that bb gun? Daddy doesn't hate it. He loves it. And he thinks that all our boys should use it. He's taught them the safety and the proper technique, but hello, six year olds aren't capable of proper technique. So, the other day daddy said Jack could shoot and again, went over safety. Jack shot a few a couple of feet away from me, then turned to me and said, "I accidentally hit the neighbor's house".

Never mind that the house is, of course, NEXT to our house and the target is hanging on the clothesline BEHIND the house at the edge of the woods. I asked if it did any damage and he said it didn't. Another boy backed up his story and said it didn't do anything. They acted totally normal and so I didn't give it another thought.

Until early Sunday morning when my neighbor came a-knocking. She asked to talk to me alone and then very discreetly, very kindly asked me if I knew anything about her bedroom window. We went out to look and sure enough, there was a hold a bit larger than a golf ball through the glass. But the screen in front of the glass wasn't broken. She thought that maybe a baseball hit the screen, the screen bent in with the force, and the window broke. I told her that no one was acting weird or anything, but I'd talk to Jon and we'd talk to the boys.

It was about two minutes later as I was getting ready for church that I remembered my conversation with Jack about the gun earlier in the week. So I went to Jack and said, "Hey Jack. Remember when you told me that you hit Val's house this week?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Can you show me where you hit it?"

"Sure". We walked upstairs and looked out Jonah's window. He pointed right away to Val's bedroom window. The broken window.

"Can you tell me what's weird about that window?"

"Nothing". And then, as he looked closer, his face turned white and he whimpered, "it's bro-kennn" sobs and sobs.

Genuinely, he had no idea that he broke it.

Poor little guy. I don't know if he was sadder that he had to use his money and do extra work to help pay for it or if he was sadder that he had to tell them what he did.

In the end, he got it out to them what he did. They are good friends, so they didn't try to give him more guilt than he already had. He got to go up to the bedroom and help Jerry take out the window. It's actually quite cool. The bullet went through the screen and just made the teeniest of holes, blasted through the glass almost the size of a baseball, and is lodged in the second layer of the storm window. Then, they gave him a popsicle. Good grief.

Well, now the boys are all in the broken window club, but let's hope that there is no competition to try to get in the lead.