Hi everyone… a little different tone today.
I always felt fortunate for the gift of humor. Whether others found my humor entertaining or not that was completely irrelevant to me. Often times when I make a joke my wife will laugh, not because the joke was funny, but because she finds it extremely humorous when I’m dying of laughter from my own wit. As long as I could discover a laughable spec in any situation I was always able to cope with even the roughest of moments. From adolescence onwards, I noticed that it was not only I who found my comedic stabs to lighten the atmosphere, but quite a few others as well. Some did not. My humor ultimately developed into an advocate in many facets, even when facing the occasional bully. As a youth, if I found myself in close encounters with a bully, I could escape personal trauma merely by delivering a simple one liner with the potential to change the tone in the atmosphere, often even changing the mind of my very own perpetrator who in short moments prior attempted to destroy me in the schoolyard. Admittedly, my humor is what might have landed me in some unfavorable predicaments in the first place, nevertheless it just kept erupting and I was often unable to prevent the words from leaving my lips. I wasn’t always able to avoid getting into a scrap, but I then dealt with it the way every other person dealt with it since the beginning of time …… I faced it.

Unfortunately my young children have not yet found their portable bag of infinite humor, and they are also not yet geared with street smarts or defensive instincts. As long as my wife and I are capable, we plan to preserve every drop of our children’s innocence and pure wonder of the world, thus we’ve not yet equipped them with skills to enter into battle with. However, for every child there comes a day when things change.

Some time ago, when I returned home from work, my youngest son (age 6) was waiting for me at the door. He had depressed body language and seemed uncomfortable to approach me with his news of the day. He reluctantly explained how he had been, for the last several weeks, bullied by another boy on the bus. He was bullied psychologically and physically. Instead of following my initial instincts to advise my son to knock this kid’s block off, I asked him if he had reported the incidents to the bus driver or any other authority at school. My son revealed that although he had made the bus driver aware of the situation, the other boy would continue his antics whenever the bus driver wasn’t looking. I’ll get back to what happened in a moment.

Folks, in today’s society we’re supposed to “talk” it out. We’re supposed to “tell teachers” and “inform on our friends and classmates”. We’re supposed to “ignore” the bullies’ words and actions. We’re supposed to “take higher ground”. I agree that there are civil solutions which we can teach our children to pursue when faced with bullies. But we have to be careful that we’re not building “Benedict Arnolds”, that we’re not creating dependent kids who cannot take care of themselves, that we’re not showing our children they can only feel positive about themselves when they have the backing of an adult holding their hand. I refuse to raise a child that without the constant support of an adult cannot build self-confidence, or cannot rely on a built-in defense mechanism (created only by discovering their own ways through trials), or who lacks assertiveness and peace of mind from knowing exactly who they are as people.

So, after I felt confident that my son had taken the proper steps to cordially resolve the issue without positive results, I told my son the following;
“The next time you feel physically threatened by this kid, you throw your hammer fist right in his grill. Make sure you get him square in the nose. His eyes will most likely water up and he’ll be shocked that you didn’t take his shit. Maybe then he will leave you alone forever. However, there is always a chance that this boy may want to counter, so if you even sense that he might come back at you, throw him another deuce.” My son said “but I’ll get in trouble with the school”. I then proceeded to explain the following: “The teachers may have authority over you in school, but the ultimate authority over you are your parents- and what your parents say is the golden rule as far as you’re concerned. If the school calls me about you defending yourself, I’ll explain that I guided you accordingly”.

So what happened you ask? Two days later, after coming home from work, I was pulling into the driveway when I noticed my son waiting at the garage door for me. He looked anxious, excited and wore a smirk. I knew something was up but I couldn’t imagine what. This is the same kid that runs around naked with a batman cape and reads Victoria’s Secret catalogs when we’re not looking, so he could have been smirking about anything. I stepped out of the car and before I could say hello he said “Papa, guess what?! Remember that kid I told you about from the school bus? Well he tried messing with me again today. I told him to stop but he didn’t. So I popped him in the nose like you told me to and he backed away and sat somewhere else. He didn’t even look at me for the rest of the bus ride”. My son looked proud and confident, not because he hurt someone, but because he handled an intimidating situation on his own when no one else was there to help. And that’s how life works. Since that day my son has been more confident, and less afraid of the world. He still avoids confrontation when possible but he is not afraid to face it when it’s unavoidable. Self-empowerment. LIFE.

I really think we need to harden kids the fuck up. Mine included. At least let’s give them a chance to learn how to take a blow in life and get back up. Let’s make them use a rake and a wheelbarrow every so often and get off the devices. Let’s lead the children to excavate any internal integrity so that we may nurture it through lessons of family and hard work, and equally through lessons of rising above adversity. Let them get cut from the little league team if they’re not good enough- they’ll try harder to improve for next year. They will be stronger human beings and less apt to crumble under bullies. This sense of self will trickle into adulthood as well.

We’ve all seen those social media shares or email circulars where the heading states “click like or share if you remember this list of things from growing up”. The list will go to remind us of the times when kids drank out of hoses, rode in cars without seatbelts or played in the woods all day until it became dark. Most notably the list also states “We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!”

I agree…..

Have a great weekend everyone! I’ll deliver the funnies again on Monday to cure your “back to work blues”.