My younger son got a set of really powerful squirt guns for his birthday a few weeks ago. And this afternoon, he and his siblings got a great idea. We live on a street with a fair amount of traffic, and they decided to take the squirt guns out to the sidewalk and shoot at the passing cars. I don’t know how long they were at it when my son scored a direct hit–through the open window, on the toddler in the baby seat on far side of the car. Bullseye.

By the time I got home, my kids had already been read the riot act twice, once by the baby’s mother, and once by Jane.

I called them down, and observed that when they were grown up, there would be two or three outstanding instances of colossal childhood stupidity that they would occasionally reminisce about at family gatherings–like the time my older brothers were found rolling their Tonka toys down the center line of that very same street–and that this had better one of them! Because if it ever happened again, they would be unlikely to remember it fondly.

They are extremely subdued this evening.