I’d go with the “It’s normal, but you shouldn’t let them break other people’s toys” camp.
My 8 year old, who is normally very kind and gentle to younger kids, who spends HOURS crawling around with his baby cousins, shocked me a few days ago.
We went up a very tall tower which was made of steel grids, so that you could see below you as you walked, and out across the city. The walls were also steel grilles but high up at about adult face-level were a number of holes, about 9 inches by 9 inches, presumably so you could take pictures without having steel slats in the way.
Kid looks up at one and in a thoughful manner says,
Kids watch TV (even some things their parents don’t about), play video games, read comics, interact with all sorts of friends, and often have vivid imaginations. So, sometimes they come up with things that if done or said by an adult would cause the FBI or NSA to keep close tabs on them. Sometimes it’s unintentionally funny or weird. And get this, sometimes they try to creep or gross you out! So, I vote for forget about it.
Now we come to my anecdotes of youthful weirdness.
We (my brother and I) would build model airplanes and take severe pains to get the camoflage patterns and colours and all the markings as accurate as possible. We would use my Grand father’s old USAAF papers and armed services newsletters and whatnot to get it all straight. Then we would light them on fire and throw them at each other.
My cousin Scott and I would make Lego space capsules that we would put frogs and toads in, then have them experience re-entry by throwing them off the house out into the dirt road. Survivability was often quite limited.
I liked to cut up dolls and action figures and re-attatch the limbs to other cut up dolls. And not always substituting a leg for a leg. Melting an arm to either side of a face looked pretty cool. As did having 4 or more legs on one doll.
As an adult, I gave a freind’s (not yet but soon to be ex gf)… anyways, I gave her 8 yr old daughter a Barny the Dinosaur head. Yeah, just the head. I got a bunch of Barney’s through a major mix up of things, so I cut off some of their heads. Anyways, I gave one of the heads to little Jenny. She loved it! She said she thought it was the best idea of what to do to Barney. “I hate that freakin bastard” were her words. About 13 yrs later, at her wedding, she told me she still has that Barney head.
Dude, he’s one. He barely grasps the idea of time; he’s sure as heck not gonna grok gender-appropriate behavior.
Besides, why get so uptight about it? As long as he doesn’t do anything totally socially unacceptable (“No, Billy, dresses are only for girls to wear”), let him have fun with the doll.
Yeah, but surely burning a body at a lower temperature for a longer length of time could acheive the same effect—granted, it’s not as fast or efficient as a high-temperature cremation, but still do-able. (A long weekend alone in the dead of winter with a good supply of firewood might be enough to get the job done.)
This is, of course, ignoring the almost inevitable trace evidence that might be left—teeth, bone chips, surgical pins, fatty residue, or whathaveyou.
Yeah, but you wouldn’t manage in a fireplace. A funeral pire essentially works that way - big ol’ hill of wood, body on top, and it burns everything away. A fireplace would still be cooler yet, and I doubt you’d get good air circulation (thus making the fire burn even worse) with a big ol’ body occupying the interior.
