"Don't make me do this..."

Yesterday afternoon, Colin engaged in his favorite activity of terrorizing his sister. This has many forms, but on this occasion was manifested by threatening her with his replica of a Napoleon-era pistol, straight from Paris, France, folks. It's not supposed to be a toy, but any time he picks it up to "just look" at it, the urge to brandish it at someone overwhelms him. So that's what he was doing, before Mommy and Daddy intervened and repeated our mandate of not pointing guns at people, not pretending to wound, maim, dismember, eviscerate, or otherwise do violence to living creatures, even if it happens to be your little sister. So there's the back story.

Several minutes later, Hallie wanted something to drink. I was deep in the throes of painting something, so I referred her to Daddy. Daddy was deep in the throes of computing something, so he asked her to wait a minute. Apparently she had a thirst the likes of which has never been seen, so she waxed impatient within seconds, and the polite, singsong-y "May I please have something to drink" turned abruptly to a screechy "Give me something to drink right now!!"

Suddenly she had our undivided attention.

"Hallie, that is not the way you talk to people," said Eli. "It is not okay to yell at Daddy like that."

"But I wanted something to drink!"

"And I said I would get you something, in just one minute. You need to be patient."

Silence. Then, in a tone implying that this was the only possible outcome for withholding beverages, and it was on our heads and we had only ourselves to blame, Hallie declared:

"I don't like those words. If that's what you're going to say to me, I'm just going to have to go shoot Colin."

Exit, stage right!

Her whole demeanor was so "hey, I didn't want it to come to this, but you leave me no choice," that Eli and I couldn't even respond. Basically, we just got schooled. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do, and if certain parties of siblitude have to pay the price for parental malfeasance, hey, that's just spreading the karma out a little more evenly, isn't it?