The Baby Expert: We Need to Talk About Robin Hood

This past weekend, the wife and I watched the movie, We Need to Talk About Kevin. At first, she said she had never heard of the movie, but about a quarter of the way in, she suddenly exclaimed that her sister had just recently told her about this movie. According to the wife, here’s her sister’s summary of the movie:

Sister: So, I watched a movie while I was on the plane. It was about a kid who cried a lot when he was a baby, and when he grew up, he killed a lot of people. Come to think of it, doesn’t your baby cry a lot?
Jessie: Uh…
Sister: Oh, that didn’t really come out right, did it?

While it is true that our baby does cry a lot and probably has some issues that she needs to sort out, one thing that wasn’t mentioned was that the boy in the movie used a bow and arrow to kill his victims.

This is important, because as a kid growing up, I also had a bow and arrow set. And I had a target set up in the backyard just like the one the boy had in the movie. But let it be known that all similarities between this basket case and me end right there.

It all started with the movie, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, starring Kevin Costner. I remember watching that movie in the theaters and afterwards, wanting my own bow and arrow. After constant pestering, my parents finally relented and bought me a nice set.

Well, one day I was playing with it outside, and on a whim, decided to aim it straight up to the sky and shoot it just to see how high it would go. Very, very high, as it turned out. And as it quickly came falling back to earth as a dangerous, speeding projectile, it suddenly occurred to me that it could hit someone.

I didn’t see where it landed, but I could clearly hear it clatter onto someone’s driveway or backyard. For weeks after that, I was terrified that the people who found my arrow would come looking after me. I was scared they would go to the police. Every time I heard police sirens, my heart would begin pounding, and my hands would sweat profusely. In the back of my mind, I had already prepared a good-bye speech to my parents because I was certain it was only a matter of time before the police came to arrest me and whisk me off to jail.

But in the end, nothing came of the incident, and I decided to hang up my bow for good and quit playing Robin Hood. So I think the lesson to be learned from this story is, sure, Caitlyn might be a major whiner and crybaby, but as long as we don’t let her watch Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Disney’s Robin Hood, and the countless other titles that are out there, we should be ok.