Forget knives in gumball machines, the mere thought of a knife within 10 yards of a child these days is grounds for a complete lockdown of any public facility.

There are two things at work here, as I see it. First, the kid was 2. Set aside all talk of consequential awareness and long-term memory for a moment, and consider fine motor skills in children. If you’ve ever seen a toddler with a crayon, you know that when they draw, their hand movements when holding an implement are very jerky and could easily be termed “stabbing motions”. Movements toward their bodies are smoother, such as feeding themselves, but still nowhere within the arena of precise. Movements away from them, or toward another person/object, are pretty sketchy, as they don’t have the experience or muscle memory to gauge the depth and use implements with much finesse. I think it’s a great stretch to imagine any malice on the part of the child, rather than to say that this kid had a sharp object and probably didn’t have the muscle control to move it delicately or precisely. I’d wager that a pencil could have done similar damage, and would not have garnered the comments about video games.

Second, you have a society that likes to blame and sensationalize, and forgets that kids get in trouble all the time without the help of external influences. I’m not all that old, but I recall that cuts, bruises, and stitches were fairly common when I was young, and no one called the police and the newspaper when my brothers and I threw stones at each other and I ended up with a cut on my forehead. Surely no one blamed Ikari Warriors and immediately associated our skirmish as mimicking grenade-tossing insurgents.

I remember the coolest kid in my grade school. He showed up nearly every week with a new minor injury and a new story to tell about how he got it. Once upon a time we allowed children to play, and to play rough. It taught them that sharp things cut, that flaming things burn, and a host of other lessons. I sure as hell miss those days.