It's all my fault, isn't it?

Overheard from the extreme back of the minivan as we carpooled to preschool:

Arielle: (Said with great relish and enthusiasm) And then I stopped it, so that Swiper couldn't steal Dora's backpack, and then Dora and Boots had GUNS! And they killed Swiper! Because he was naughty.

Whereupon, I stopped breathing for a few seconds while I 1) tried to process that those words had, really, truly, just come out of the mouth of my beautiful, sweet, innocent little daughter, 2) tried frantically to determine just exactly what the best response was, and 3) tried to think of anything she might have seen on TV lately that featured guns.

Guns? Guns? We don't watch any shows that have gun-wielding animated characters! We don't even watch Spongebob! Wait! Were there guns in Peter Pan? Aaaarrrgghhhh!!!!

Quick! Respond! Must respond!

Me: (Said in shocked tones) Arielle! We don't kill people just because they're naughty!

Arielle: (Annoyed, defensive, a little hurt that Mommy has so unfairly attacked her in front of her friends) Moooommyyyy! I'm pretending!


Me: (Sternly) I don't like that pretending.

From the extreme back of the minivan: Lots of whispers and the occasional, "Sshh! You're being too loud!"

I pretend I don't hear.

Of course, this is probably just all normal childhood fantasy play, and I've probably screwed up and scarred her for life or something, but ...

I'm still just so profoundly shocked that my daughter could have ever said something like that, and I'm not so sure, now that I've had time to think about it and muse other possible reactions, that I would change anything.

In a world of school shootings, mass murders, children being kidnapped from their beds, and growing violence in our entertainment as well as our actions, I feel I need to draw a strong, definite, bright line, that, in our family, we do not condone hurting other people or using force, in any form, to get our own way. We use bargaining, negotiation and compromise. We do not hit. We do not make our sister cry by saying mean things to her. We include our sister and all our friends when we are playing. We Choose The Right. We think about What Would Jesus Do? We Do Unto Others As We Would Have Them Do Unto Us. We don't kill people for being naughty. We don't even pretend to kill people for being naughty.

Then, on the way home, J. invited Arielle over to his house to watch the Star Wars movies, and I remember. This is the kid who's see all the Star Wars movies, even the last one with the mass murder of small children and Anakin getting his arms and legs burnt off. Hmmm. Maybe this gun thing is all his parents' fault.