At first I wasn't sure if arming my teen-ager would be a good idea. I pictured him sawing off the end of his new BB-gun rifle and shoving the weapon into his shorts, jumping on his bicycle and
riding towards some kind of stand-off with Plantation police.

But putting trust in teens, scary as it might feel, can actually build a sense of responsibility in them. I think kids rise to expectations. And you have to set them very high.

So, yes, we bought Creed a BB-gun for his 13th birthday. We also bought him a few pistol-style air guns that shoot plastic BBs and are less powerful than the rifle, in case you "accidentally'' shot someone with it.

I think most boys had a BB gun at some point in their youth, and I wasn't going to deprive him. Even I spent quite a bit of time as a teen shooting BB guns. I was on a BB-gun shooting team with other kids whose parents worked at Oklahoma State Penitentiary. We were taught to shoot by convicts, so I guess you could say we were trained by experts.

But there was a kid among us, Jimmy Cook, with a glass eye -- the result of a ricocheted BB. Creed has heard about him 1,000 times. So Creed wears his gun goggles.

So far, no one has been seriously injured.

I told Creed he could shoot lizards. He was horrified. That's when the teen came out:

"Mom, I don't shoot lizards! I'm not a monster like you!''

OK. Guess I'll have to dust off my trigger finger and take care of those lizards myself.