My sons and I were at Fort Fisher (in North Carolina), looking at a cannon from the Civil War. My 5-year-old said, “Mommy, if there was a bad guy over there, and if I had cannonballs here, I’d put the cannonball in the cannon and shoot the bad guy.”
I said, “That’s a good idea, but I have a hunch if there were cannonballs here, they probably wouldn’t work. I bet they’ve disabled this cannon so it won’t fire.”
He put his hands on his hips, looked at me as if I were clueless about “pretend play,” and said, “Momma, I’m not even allowed to light a match; how could I fire a cannon?”