Pentagon Visit

Try to explain the Pentagon to a four year old without scaring them. I wondered how military families do it yesterday when we were attempting to tell Ben where we were going. I'm not against guns. I really enjoy shooting, though I've always shot at paper targets, never gone hunting. I played superheros and cowboys and Indians growing up where we "shot" and "killed" people all the time. Didn't think I'd have a problem with my kids doing the same, until Ben "killed" something one day. My angelic three year old killed something with a gun. It just felt wrong for him to play that way. We now don't kill people at our house, but I'm at a loss for where to go from there. Mostly I have avoided guns because I don't know what to say, so I've never bought them for the kids.

Now we visit the Pentagon and talk about the amazing men and women defending our country. The display cases have lots of guns in them, beautifully displayed telling the history of different branches of the military. Guns scare Ben, how we do reconcile it all in his little head? I don't know. Our conversation on the drive there was something like this: We're going to the Pentagon. What is the Pentagon? That's a building where people work that keep us safe. Safe from what? Bad guys. What kind of bad guys? Ones that might want to hurt us. Why would they hurt us? I don't know, I guess they are just mean. What do they do to the bad guys? Look at the airplanes in the sky, aren't they big? (dodge the question) At least Maddie provided some comic relief. She caught onto the "mean guys" idea. She asked, "Is Maddie safe from the mean guys?" "Yes! Maddie is safe!" "Oh. Okay. That's good." "Daddy, are you safe from the mean guys?" "Yes!" "Oh. That's TOOOOOOO bad!" We enjoyed our Pentagon tour. We walked and walked and walked and walked and only saw 10% or less of the building. The kids did great in their strollers. We got a lot of funny looks and smiles from the people working there. We had a friend from my old neighborhood growing up give us the tour while my sister and family were in town. We had three double strollers and seven kids with six adults. We really were a sight to see, like a stroller parade walking the halls of the Pentagon. Probably the highlight was seeing the Pentagon Memorial to the victims of the September 11 Attack. It was really a special memorial. A special, quiet place to sit and think. Now I know how to get there, I can take all our visitors, so buy your tickets and come on out.