The measure of a boy

Henry got in a bit of a fight last week with his best friend/nemesis Kinnon. It wasn't so much of a fight as a demonstration of Henry's wimpiness (this is written with love, I promise).

We were playing soccer in Kinnon's yard. Kinnon lost interest in the game after a few kicks; he was off in the far corner of the yard climbing a tree. Daniel (Kinnon's dad) and I took turns as goalie while Henry took shots.

I was in net when the fight broke out. Henry ran to mid field (yard) and performed the classic soccer blooper: he swung at the ball and missed, brought his foot back for a second pass and instead ended up standing on it. Gravity being what it is, Henry was on his butt pretty quick.

I have no idea how he moved so quickly, but Kinnon was there in a flash. In what can only be described as mid-eighties WWF technique, Kinnon dished out a perfect flying elbow drop to Henry's gut (he may have even tapped his elbow with his other hand before executing, I can't be sure).

Henry, stunned, rolled over to face his now prone (and grinning wildly) opponent. Henry peppered him with a series of sissy punches (the boy didn't even try to make fists), accenting each with the sound "Eeh! Eeh! Eeh!"

Daniel and I pulled them apart. We were laughing too hard at this point to dish out any serious punishment.

My son. The sissy puncher.

4 comments:

Twyla said...

Hi there,
I found you through my own profile by clicking on Nova Scotia blogs. :-)
I am laughing hysterically at this, because I was always a huge fan of wrestling and know exactly what you mean by 'he may have even tapped his elbow with his other hand before executing'. Wasn't 80's wrestling great?

wordswords said...

Yes it was. I remember my once-a-month bag of chips in grade 4 (on hot dog day) came with a WWF werestler card in it.

I hoped every month for Hulk Hogan, but always got some no-name hairy guy. Eech.

Anonymous said...

Your boy the 'sissy' and my daughter, the burgeoning bully, already at 10 months... Bojan and I are dismayed (and laughing about it) and we aren't sure what to do about it, Dave, but Elise is - there's no other word for it - aggressive. We've been trying to hide behind other terms such as assertive, or teething, but really its just plain aggressive.

At the library a month ago she chased (while crawling) and caught a three year old boy, reducing him to fearful tears by grabbing a fistful of his hair and beating his head repeatedly against the floor (until parents intervened). Now she has weapons - other parents call them teeth. When she is angry - as she was last night when Bojan took her out of the room in an attempt to let me sleep more - she thrashed and hit and scratched and, again we must face up to the word for it, nipped, bit and gnashed like a dog or puppy in a fight with a bigger animal. And this use of her teeth, umm weapons, isn't unusual when she becomes angry, like, when, for example, you pick her up when she doesn't want to be, take something away she shouldn't have, change her diaper, you know, inflaming radical stuff.

It's just a stage right? - we're hanging on to that faint hope...

wordswords said...

It's probably a stage. Henry went through (and is going through) several of them. The first was at about 10 months. Lots of hitting.

See. Want. Hit.

He got over it for a long while. Then he had an even worse one when he was 2. That drove us crazy, but he got over it.

This current one is pretty crazy. He arrived at a play group in the park the other day and started chucking rocks at the other kids. Totally out of character. He's at this stage where he talks like a 40-year old but lacks any reason when it comes to understanding he's not the only human being in the world.

It will pass too.