Poor Charles. Mom made him and Corwin take Poly out for a walk. Charles took along his backpack, so that he could get some patrolling in. A couple of adult neighbors wandered by and, trying to be friendly, commented “you must have just out of school, you still have your backpack on”. Charles, being Charles, interpreted this as making fun of him (the concept of a conversational gambit for the purposes of civility not being one with which he is familiar). Charles claimed that this terrible utterance had completely destroyed his joy of patrolling and that he would never do it again.
However, an hour or two after supper he was once again equipped for his protective duty.
P.S. We found out about this because Corwin volunteered the information at dinner. Needless to say, we (parents) had a hard time deciding which event was more shocking.