There is a book titled “The Dangerous Book for Boys” (Harper Collins), by brothers Conn and Hal Iggulden, that teaches boys how to have a childhood. This used to come naturally to them. (Maybe they are evolving?) In the book, there are lessons about fishing, building forts and go-karts, and identifying spiders and insects. The great success of “The Dangerous Book for Boys” suggests that many young boys don’t already know how to turn sticks into pretend guns or chase little girls with lizards and grasshoppers.

 

I have three boys. Not one of them needs this book. 

 

Just the other day, I was clipping dead blooms off the rose bush when Ford came around the corner with a wooden musket hanging from his shoulder by a leather strap. He was wearing the triangle-shaped felt hat (the one he calls the “George Washington hat”) that we bought in Williamsburg, Va., and cost more than our lunch. But he was wearing the hat backwards, so it looked more like a felt sailor’s cover than it did something from the Revolutionary War. 

 

“You’re gonna have to move, Mom,” Ford said. “The British are coming and we’ve got a war to fight.”

 

Just then, our neighbor’s boy peeked around the bushes looking suspiciously British.

 

“Right here in the front yard?” I asked. “Can’t you have a war in the backyard?”

Apparently they could not. You see, the Potomac River, that thin strip of white concrete that connects our driveway to the our front door, is indisputably in the front yard, not the back, and it can’t be moved. Also, our front yard, once the burial place for the body parts of several plastic flamingoes left in our grass for a fundraiser and promptly destroyed by my son (because “flamingoes aren’t supposed to stand on two legs anyway,”), is the boys’ preferred place to play. It's also the place where they like to show all our neighbors how they play tee-ball barefooted, hang from the mailbox, pull each other through the grass with a jumprope (not recommended), and sometimes, urinate in the dirt. 

 

Before I moved to the backyard to make way for the Revolutionary War, I wanted to finish pruning the roses and take limbs off the River Birch, because, of course, I want our front yard to look nice when the boys beat each other on the ground.

 

As quick as I laid cut limbs on the grass, the boys were hauling them off to their “fort,” and pretending they were swords. But my middle son, Owen (5), who thinks jokes involving his bodily functions are the ultimate in humor, doesn’t understand the Revolutionary War the same way that Ford (7), who once read the phone book just for fun, does. 

 

“I’m going to go get a gun from the garage,” Owen told Ford. 

I looked around for passersby, ready to assure them that my boys weren’t talking about real guns. Just another one of those tricky parts of parenting in today’s world. Except, explaining toy guns would be much easier, I thought, than those times I had to explain why Owen yells “Let’s get Trojan ready” in the front yard.(His tee-ball team is named the Trojans.) 

 

“They’re not guns,” Ford yelled at Owen. “They’re muskets!”

 

Owen came back with a battery-operated laser gun that has a siren. 

 

Ford threw his felt hat at the ground and stomped his foot. “Oweeeeen!” he yelled.

 

“They didn’t have laser guns back then! And their guns didn’t have sirens! We’re talking about, like, 100 years ago!”

 

I looked up from my pruning. “Actually, it was more than 200 years ago, Ford,” I said.

 

Owen went back to the garage and came out with a football helmet on his head. 

 

“What are you doing now?” Ford asked.

 

“I’ll be the helicopter pilot,” Owen said. “I’ll shoot down the bad guys.”

 

“They didn’t have helicopters either!” Ford was screaming now. “Come on, grab a

musket and let’s fight the South.”

 

“The British,” I corrected. “The North fought the South in the Civil War.”

 

“Whatever.”

 

Owen pointed his laser gun at me and asked if I was British.

 

I finished my yard work while the boys slid on their bellies through the “swamps” of the battlefield and chased down run-away Big Wheels...I mean, horses. They continued to fight, alternately, the South and the British, and eventually, Ford gave up and let Owen use his laser gun with siren. 

 

No, my boys don’t need at book to learn about being dangerous. But that day, when the Revolutionary War, Civil War and Gulf War were all seemingly fought simultaneously on our freshly mowed lawn, I realized that perhaps what my boys do need is a history book.