My son's favorite pants are camouflage. His favorite color is TAN. And recently he said to me, "I don't want you to call me Isaac anymore."

"What do you want me to call you?" I asked.

"I want you to call me LIEUTENANT."

Once when he was younger, he was Civil War. First name CIVIL, last name WAR.

Last summer, a National Guardsman on training mission invited "Civil War" to sit in a Humvee at South Dakota's Custer State Park. During our trip to the park we saw buffalo, mountain goats and bighorn sheep. But it's the Humvee that stands out in my son's mind as the highlight of our trip.

Several months ago, he saw the front of a news magazine featuring a young Pakistani boy carrying a rifle. His little boy face was set in a solemn look, a look of fear mixed with a sense of duty. At least that's what it looked like to me. But that's not what my son saw when he found the magazine on our coffee table.

"Why does he get to have a real gun?" he asked.

"Maybe it was part of his Halloween costume," I improvised.

"No," said Isaac, "that's a real gun. Why does he get to have a real gun?"

These are hard times for mothers.

I don't think it's only because of the current state of affairs that my son loves all things military. To be sure, he's a cowboy, a policeman, and a fireman almost as often as he's a soldier. But with the world situation what it is, my son's interest in military play is sobering.

I'm not sure where it comes from. He does have a cousin who has spent two long tours in Iraq. He has six uncles and one aunt who are all veterans, but their service was long before his time and is rarely discussed at family gatherings.

I grew up in a family of seven boys. I know there are things about men women simply cannot relate to (and vice versa.) And it starts when they're boys. It's almost a cliché that a boy will turn any object into a gun. And it doesn't even have to have a gun shape. After awhile, you don't argue, you just hand him the banana--or the ruler, or the tennis shoe.

It's easy for me to see how the little boy on the cover of the magazine and others like him could be convinced to carry a "real" gun, if indeed that was a real gun. Little boys are an odd mix of fear and bravado. Maybe military play gives them a sense of control over the dangerous world around them. But it makes their mothers feel much less in control.

Sometimes, I look at my son wearing his army helmet and camouflage pants, carrying whatever object he has chosen to use as a gun at the moment, and I think, I carried you for nine months. I gave up caffeine and ate my vegetables so that you could come into this world as healthy as possible. I manipulate you into taking your vitamins. I make you where a helmet when you ride your bike. And now I'm paying for your braces. Is it all so that someday you'll be in top shape when you march off to war? My beautiful little son.

I mean Lieutenant.

© Dorothy Rosby

Dorothy Rosby is a contributing humor columnist for Fabulously40, visit her blog to learn more about her.