Why does Alex decide that it’s in Josie’s best interest to keep her daughter away from Peter? What significance is there to the fact that Alex is the first one to prevent Josie from being friends with Peter?
This topic of guns and kids is very hard issue for me.
I grew up with two sisters and we didn't have toy guns or anything violent in our home, but understandably so since we didn't have those sorts of desires and interests.
My parents did foster care for children growing up and for the most part they took in boys, and again my parents didn't allow guns or anything like that.
T being 8 and a boy, socially influenced by friends at school, influenced by tv, videogames is VERY interested in guns. Right now he's been asking (more like begging and pleading) for a B.B. Gun.
So after that long winded explanation, what does that have to do with the book?
Alex is very anti-guns/violence at the time that she discovers Josie and Peter playing with guns. Also, they were real guns. Alex reacted impulsively because she was afraid about the guns. I can relate with her feelings and reaction.
Already, Peter was an outcast if you will on the bus and at school, but then the one friend he had was being taken away from him by his friends mother. And while Josie and Peter did remain friends for years after that, it wasn't like it had been in the beginning of their childhoods.
It is sad but it's hard to say how you'd react when you find your small children playing with guns that were not kept away hard enough for kids to not get into. I know that when I'm being honest there is a part of me that would have responded the same way as Alex given my own opinions about guns/violence and the feelings I have about that.
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As a mother and a teacher, I never wanted to see guns or gun play. NEVER EVER. We bought no guns for John. NEVER EVER. But his uncle did, and it was a caps gun and probably John will say that it was one of his favorite gifts. (I let him fire all the caps off at one sitting, then never bought any more caps, so that was that.)
In the classroom, the kids knew my stand on no gun play, but I tell you, they made guns out of anything...Barbie dolls aimed and "shot", sticks, drinking straws, markers. Legos were fashioned into guns. What is it about guns? And especially boys and guns? I never saw the girls doing this in 14 years of teaching preschoolers!
I honestly can say that if I would have been Alex, it could well have ended my friendship with Lacy because of the gun incident. However, I probably would have discussed it at length first.
my thoughts are on their way, i promise...
I am not a parent, but I think I really would foster hard feelings for the parent of the child who was available to guns, especially if I saw my child playing with that child and they had guns. It gives me goosebumps just to think about it.
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