With all due respect to Brad Pitt, it’s time that this silence was finally broken. We need to talk about Fight Club.
I know Rule No. 1 is you do not talk about Fight Club, but I can’t keep quiet anymore. In fact, I’ve been openly discussing Fight Club for the past several months. Anyone I encounter who is in a similar situation to me – with two or more children under the age of 12 – I break the code of silence with a simple question: do your kids fight?
The answer is always the same. The parent will laugh and laugh and get a faraway look in their eyes and when they finally wipe the tears from their eyes they will punch me in the throat.
“Yes,” they’ll say.
And then I feel the need to clarify. I’m not just talking about bickering, or squabbling, or even a bit of pushing and shoving. I’m talking about real violence: punches, kicks, flying tackles, snow shovels to the back of the head. Do your kids fight like that?
“Yes.” Deep breath. “Yes they do.”
Then I feel a bit better, because I know I am not alone. Well, sometimes I am alone because the other parent has thrown themselves through the nearest window.
Anyway, I’m here to talk about Fight Club because I am frankly astounded by the level of violence that normal everyday humans are exposed to when they become parents. I feel my parents are to blame for the shock that I am feeling. When my children first became old enough to make a tiny little fist and slam it into their sibling’s skull, I asked my parents what my brother and I were like as kids. How much did we fight?
Their answer, bless their hearts, was to say that they couldn’t recall many fights at all. My brother and I were perfect little angels, apparently, basically raising ourselves hand-in-hand as we faced the challenges of childhood and dreamed the dreams of adulthood. And watched Ghostbusters together 87 times.
It sounds like a lovely childhood, but it is not exactly how I remember things. We were pretty chill siblings, but as the younger brother I vaguely recall getting pretty good at the game of sucker-punch-and-run-away-and-probably-get-caught-and-pummelled.
But then in my teens and 20s my life was, thankfully, quite free of violence. Sure there were a few soccer games that devolved into brawls. That’s soccer for ya. And sure one of my friends inexplicably shoved another friend at a party, breaking a wooden chair into splinters. That’s fireball whiskey for ya.
But other than that, it was all croquet and chardonnay. It was only after I had kids that I was reminded what a croquet mallet can do when a ball becomes nestled beside someone else’s face. It’s a bit of an odd sensation to spend 20 years of life in relative harmony and bliss only to discover that age 35 arrives with tiny hand grenades ready to go off at any time, particularly when they feel that some other slightly older hand grenade has gotten a fraction more orange juice for breakfast. The level of violence, and the brazenness with which it is doled out, really is quite shocking. Last weekend one of my sons figured out how to inflict maximum damage with a pepperoni stick. And not even a spicy one. Honey garlic.
The violence is real, and it’s wild. And that’s why I ask people to share their stories with me, and that’s why it’s comforting to hear back from people that they are going through this stuff too. Feel free to share your own stories – I want to hear from other parents and let them know that they, too, are not alone if they have children who act like they are in training for a career as a prison rioter.
Don’t get me wrong – my children are mostly wonderful and I love them with all my heart. Their teachers report that they are well-behaved little cherubs who sweetly and calmly help their fellow students with their work and who would never dream of challenging someone to a race and then, when they see that they are losing, shove that person face-first into a door frame. No sir, they would never do that.
My wife and I are strongly opposed to all of this child MMA, and so we finally got desperate enough to play the most powerful card in the deck. Any hitting – even one tiny little punch – now results in a loss of their already limited TV privileges for a day. It’s working, for now at least, because screen time seems to be the one thing that they prize more than making each other bleed.
We’ve also learned to think outside the box a bit. Many of the fights at our house occurred first thing in the morning when they would burst out of their room and run towards ours, a race that inevitably ended up at the foot of our bed complete with wails and screeches and punches. It was like being awoken every morning by a NASCAR race.
We talked to the usual instigator and came to the mutual conclusion that he is a grumpy jerk in the morning before he fully wakes up. As a result, we came up with plan to find him a safe, quiet nearby spot for him to go while he wakes up, and now our internal crime statistics show a 60 per cent reduction in pre-breakfast assaults.
And someday it will stop altogether, right? They won’t still be wailing on each other at age 29, right? Well, as long as they stay away from that Brad Pitt punk.
Andy Prest is the sports editor for the North Shore News and writes a biweekly humour/lifestyle column. He can be reached via email at [email protected].
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