The boy came down in tears. He doesn’t cry an awful lot for a six year old boy but this time he came down the stairs and you could tell he was crying because his face is so dirty it makes it real apparent.

It wasn’t a hurt cry, it was a “my sisters are being mean to me” kind of cry. You can tell the difference from rooms away.

So he finds me and right away he launches into the kind of language no adult in the world can understand. It’s like listening to a record played at 78 rpm.

Now, the girls upstairs hear him crying to me so they come racing down to get their side of the story out before the boy can catch his breath. So after calming everyone down, here’s what happened as best as I can make out.

The boy was walking by the girls’ room and heard them talking about the nine year old’s “bangs.” Not having any clue what a “bang” was, he thought they sounded pretty darn awesome so he barged into the room demanding to see and acquire said “bangs.” They told him he couldn’t have bangs because he was a boy.

It was that comment which prompted the tears. And let’s face it, you can hardly blame him. In no righteous God-governed world would something as cool sounding like “bangs” be only for girls.

So we explained to him what bangs were and he said, “Well, they should’ve just told me they were talking about girl stuff.”

He asked the four year old if she wanted to have a light saber fight. She responded by tackling him. Bang went his head against the wall. But he got up happy and they ran off making light saber sounds. Those are the kinds of bangs he’s cool with.