1. A fistfight.
2. The activity of fighting with the fists.

Help me with this. Generally, I have been limited to physical violence within my immediate family, and generally restricted to siblings. One sib could beat the crap out of me (and rarely did). The other sib was mine to pulverize, but that would be the one time that I would get the crap beat out of me. (See previous sentence.)

I tell my kids that fighting is bad. It is. Someone could get hurt. It could be them.

So, fighting is bad. Except when you get hit, especially if they are trying to intimidate you. Then, I say, you can defend yourself, but be prepared for the consequences. Like at their school, it would be suspension. But it could be worse.

This whole fighting thing is making me feel uncomfortable.

A lady was hit by a car in traffic and took off after the perpetrator. She chased him to a parking lot. She got out of her car to give him a piece of her mind. He ran her over. Her kid was in her car. Why would she chase after some punk with her first-grader in her back seat?

There was man–a grown man–coaching third base for the opposing team at my son’s game yesterday. He was yelling insults at our pitcher. A grown man, yelling that the 14 year-old on the mound was “scared.” The pitcher did NOT apppreciate the insults and thought about how it would feel to take the bat to the meanie. Meanie is my word, not theirs. But that is all the guy was. A 40-year-old man, insulting a kid with a bigger and better future than he has. The guy is a weanie.

My son helped talk the pitcher down. Later on, he told me that it’s much worse to hit an adult than a kid. There are rules in fisticuffs, I suppose. I think that the 3rd base coach deserved it more than a kid. But anyway, fighting is bad. And there are consequences.

There is alot (too much??) pressure on young kids to have it all together. When I was ten, I didn’t have to remember what books to bring to which class. We sat in Mrs. Gibson’s class at these table groupings and did our work from there. Mrs. Gibson was a very progressive teacher for those days. We didn’t sit in rows, and we had group projects. I recall liking them. My supplies were in a cubby immediately underneath the part of the table I sat by. And I don’t remember books. We didn’t bring them home. I think they were passed out at each class. Yeah, that’s right.

Ten year olds today switch classes and get yelled at (at least that’s how they feel) when they don’t bring the correct notebook or textbook. The teacher is frustrated because she keeps handing out additional pencils, since they don’t travel with the kids. This is, of course, to prepare them for the next year when this forgetfulness won’t be tolerated. Using this logic, parents better expect fully formed adults out of their pre-schooler because that is how they will be expected to act as adults.

My fifth grader son is having a devil of a time with this remembering thing. He has been reminded about a zillion times. The teacher asked me to emphasize the importance to him. I did. This has been a source of conflict. Then someone (not the teacher) told me that he is still a little kid. She is right. Makes me think about what pediatricians always tell us when we are potty-training our babies, “He won’t go to college still in diapers.” Some things take time. Some people take more time than others. I am switching to observing and offering some atta-boys. He will remember his pencils better when he is ready. He has some time to learn to be an adult.

Do you know where I put my cell phone?