Though I've never been in a fight in my life, I think if I played hockey for money, I'd be the enforcer. It's fun to have your teammates back when they've been disrespected. As a parent however, I leave the heavy lifting to the wifeage. Which isn't fair to some degree, but I think she has a greater ability to grasp the magnitude of the situation and stay madder longer. Which is required when hammering on the little ones. Case in point: yesterday I received a call from the wifeage informing me that the boy was sent to the Principal's office. My heart actually skipped a beat as I hearkened back to my day as an elementary school student and for all the things that got me plopped down in front of the principal. Although he never really seemed to be a "pal". The wifeage was less than impressed when I say, "oh, what a seminal moment in our parenting career. I've been waiting for this." Almost a little too emphatically as she could sense my pride in the irreverence of my boy. "Um...he hit a little girl over the head with his lunchbox," she said. I was ripped from my fantasy of my boy wailing on the playground bully and only really heard the word "girl" and "lunchbox". "I'm sorry," I said. "Did you say he hit a girl with his lunchbox?," now totally crushed. Turns out some girl called him a "barf brain" (high marks for quality of name calling) and the boy let fly. The wifeage, upon being mortified with the recap from the teacher, restrained herself from physically pummelling the boy with the aforementioned lunchbox and instead, went the more sedate route of grounding him to his room. He was let out to have dinner with the girl and me while the wifeage retired to the office to get some work done. 30 minutes later she came out to the kitchen to find us fully engaged in a game of charades with me on the ground acting like a dog while the kids giggled and shouted out answers. The wifeage seeing the boy having fun and not somber and remorseful for his misdeed, brought a frighteningly quick end to the game by shouting, "he's being a hot dog." And with that, both were dispatched to their rooms where they were to PJ-ify, brush their teeth and get in bed. And then she lowered the boom on me for producing fun to an otherwise priveledgeless prisoner/kid. At which point I said, "I forgot and besides...you're the heavy." Which got me banished. Her fury hath no quarter. Anyway, hope you are well.

Johnny GoFast