Adventures in Parenting, Vol. 45

or, the closest I've ever been to fisticuffs.

I watched the kids badgering and taunting Number One son as he walked over to the sideline where I had been standing, watching the third of three soccer games for the day, this time of Little Red who isn't all that little anymore but the name has stuck at least for now--that red hair making him instantly recognizable not only to his father but to anyone who has been around this family for more than two or three minutes.

Number one was not doing well, I could see. He was hunched up and had the knit he gets in his brow when he is worked up about something.  So, I talked to him about it. Those kids had thrown a football at his head and had generally been jerks to him.  I wanted to intervene for his sake, but there wasn't anything I could do about it, and what's more, he does need to defend himself sometimes. That all changed a few minutes later when he had to go to the bathroom and had to walk past where those same kids were playing.  I told him it would be fine and I would be watching.  And sure enough, as he tried to walk past them, just as his back was to them, they pegged him with the football. I took off after him and told him to grab the ball.  He did, whereupon they jumped him and kicked him.

At that point I may have shed the usual self-control.  I grabbed the ball, and shouted at the kids to take me to their parents.  Well, they didn't need to, because he had heard the commotion, and as I approached the person it was clear that he was not prone to see things my way.  All he saw was a stranger shouting at his children.  I was hot and righteously angry, though, having watched them size up my son and deliberately target him, so though he leaned heavily on me and tried the whole intimidation-by-implicit-ass-kicking tactic (my thought, which I vocalized, was, "are you kidding me?"), I did not back down.  At that point, the heated voices had gotten the attention of others, and a casual friend of ours, JM, had to step between us and physically usher me away.

It took me a long time to calm down, though on the outside I regained my composure. In retrospect, I should of course have refrained from shouting at the other children--could have easily dealt with the situation without anger. But I saw red when I saw what they did.  I'm not yet so old that I don't have an ornery streak on occasion.  That said, I'm glad a much bigger man intervened between me and the other fellow . . . I would have lost that fight.