An angry Roman soldier

Ok, so this week is our vacation bible school at work and I'm playing Brutus, St. Paul's house guard. And every day the kids come and visit Paul in his home and he shares with them one of God's lessons, usually something like "God's love is a gift", etc.

And yesterday, the first day, I was gruff and grumpy and told them to leave Paul alone, or they'd end up chained to me, too (Paul and Brutus have a chain connecting their ankles) and then I told them to stay away from the dangerous Christians.

Apparently, I was scary. I scared some 4 year-olds to the point where one of the group leaders mentioned it at the end of the day and this morning a few more adults mentioned they had talked about Brutus with their kids.

I feel awful. I don't mean to sound inflated about myself, but I pride myself on being kind and gentle to kids and I would never want to scare them - I was just trying to be grumpy. The older kids got it - some of them were trying to make me laugh (I just glared at them), but a few of the 4 year olds were very wary of me today. So I toned it down big time. And still some little kid was overheard saying he was scared when the soldier yelled. I did not yell or even get close to it - that I would swear on the Bible.

I feel terrible. There's this little pit in my stomach that clenches when I think about it. Actually-more than that - I feel bad for the kids I do know who don't understand why I won't smile at them when they come into Paul's house, because normally I'm very smiley and I know about 1/3 of the kids from church stuff and school. The 2nd graders on up understand, but there are a few kindergartners who are confused, I can tell.

Of course, then there are the 3rd and 4th graders who try to pass Paul weapons (something I specifically told them not to do!) just to see what I'll do.

I'm having a good time, but thank goodness I get converted by the end and get to smile and be happy; I'm not very good at being grumpy, I feel bad about it.

I'll try to post a pic of me in costume sometime this week. Then you can decide whether I'm intimidating or not.