The World of Boys

I grew up in a house with girls.  I never had a brother or cousins that lived close by.  So I don't have much, if any, experience with little boys.  Porter, for the most part, is pretty mellow and easy going, and I haven't struggled much with the male part of his nature.  But I did find this drawing of his the other day:

I'm not sure how well it will show up here, but it involves violence of many kinds.  And includes his sister.  He was impressed with himself and thought it was funny and fairly unremarkable.  Bryce and I puzzled over it though with half nervous laughter, wondering if we should be worried or what.  I mean, what the hell?  When I was his age, I remember drawing pictures of rainbows and sunshine and an inch of blue sky at the top of every page. 

So I brought it up one day with a couple of friends who both have boys older than Porter.  I described the picture, and they just nodded.  Totally normal boy stuff.  One friend showed me some pictures from her boys that looked amazingly similar, with people falling off cliffs and shooting guns.  I even googled it, and read blog entries just like this one, with people wondering what happened to their sweet boy that only ever watched PBS.  Who knew?  Boys.  It's a whole new world.