Itchin' For a Fight...

My pal doubletrouble, over at the newly minted Rattail Bastard, asks a thought-provoking question.

"You showed amazing restraint back then. It's kind of funny- you younger folk (not disparaging your age- wanna trade?) didn’t "fight" much, it appears. I know my son didn’t, nor did many of his friends. Back in the ‘50s- ‘60s, when I was a yute, it was damn near a daily occurrence. That’s how we settled our differences, mostly. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but I wonder what happened? Now, of course, you’d have the swat team out @ the first sign of fisticuffs, & an army of lawyers right behind.An interesting, albeit strange commentary on the "evolution" of civilization, no?"

Well, I'll speak only for myself, both as a young man growing up and as a father to a young boy just entering the cutthroat world of schoolyard taunts and bullies.


First off, personally, I didn't get into many fights growing up. I got the snot beaten out of me on a regular basis as I've mentioned before. I was always smaller, a year behind everyone else in the growth spurt curve, a fat kid awkward in body with a gung-ho cop dad whose only advice was "don't come crying to me if you lose" [the fight].


As I grew older (and started working out), it became apparent to me that I was not cut out for fighting - I wouldn't fight over small stuff, and if something got big enough to fight over, I was in it to win. I found that, in the rare cases where someone pushed me to the point of fighting back, that I wasn't just fighting that person - I was fighting a long list of people who had wronged me in the past and I had never confronted.


Which usually had dire consequences for the person who tangled with me. Fortunately, there were only a couple of incidents, and in neither case was anyone permanently injured. There was a young man picked up and held out of a 7 story window, though...

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All this, of course, doesn't answer doubletrouble's question...

For me (and, by extension, my generation), fighting was not (yet) completely discouraged. We hadn't seen the idiocy of both boys getting in trouble when a bully finally received his comeuppance as seems to be the case these days. Schoolyard fights were still commonplace; school shootings were practically unheard of; the most you could expect from a fight was a talking-to by the vice principal. There was no anger-management counseling, nor were kids expelled under idiotic "zero tolerance" rules.

Alas, things are different for my son and his contemporaries. In a mad rush to "de-boy" the schoolboy, fighting is now harshly punished for all participants - even when it's a kid fighting back to defend himself. Grief counselors are called in whenever something bad happens in a foolhardy attempt to insulate kids from the cold harsh reality of life. Simple childhood games of "tag" are banned because we don't want to hurt the feelings of the kid who's "it".

We're rounding the edges off of everything, wrapping these kids in bubble-wrap, and only allowing them to play with safe and sterile Nerf™ toys. Even worse, we're deluding ourselves into thinking that this is somehow good for our kids - as though failure is something that they need to be protected from, rather than learn from. And we're doing them a terrible disservice.

We learn the most not when something works, but when it doesn't work. When something works, when everyone gets along, we don't question anything. When something doesn't work, when someone in the group just won't play well with others, we have to examine the situation and decide if the group is wrong or if it's the individual. And yes, sometimes fighting is necessary. Bullies cannot be allowed to go unchecked. Wrongs need to be righted, lest we spend our lives looking over our shoulders.

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I fear for the day when I get the call that my son is in trouble for fighting. Because if he's in trouble because he was defending himself (or someone else); if he's facing disciplinary action because he stood up to a bully; I will raise all sorts of holy hell about it. I refuse to accept that fighting is never allowed, for there are still things worth fighting for. And one's dignity is one of those things.

That is all.