Boys and Weapons

How did we go from the family with the absolute zero tolerance for guns, not even toy guns, not even water guns, to the family that shrieks happily through the woods throwing pine cones, I mean "sonic grenades" and "frag grenades", at each other until everyone is dead? How?
Plastic light sabers.
The gateway weapon.
So fake, so pretend, so harmless. So fun.
And now- now none of the pine cones and bits of bark collected for the nature table are safe. I think I need my own light saber just to protect my armory of horse chestnuts and dried dogwood berries from invading armies of boys come to pillage my sweet Waldorfy treasure trove, er... weapons cache.
I still haven't gotten used to having to make the choice, in my own boy-ravaged home, of a toilet seat that is either always up or always sticky, and now this! What's most shocking is that now I join in, and run, laughing and trilling just as loudly as they, flinging "grenades" and cheering "strikes".
And just like that, we've become, I guess, a family I wouldn't have let my own past tense boys play with.
All because of light sabers.
Light sabers and delicious, most serious, epic, hours long hot summer battles of boys in the park, scores and scores of boys, forming battalions and hierarchies, marching in formation, falling in battle, being revived, soldiering on.
Blast you, insidious light saber of doom!