Picked the boys up from school on Tuesday; how was your day, blah, blah, blah. And got quite an interesting story from Christopher. He was out on the playground at lunch, doing something on something (sitting on a particular piece of playground equipment I think) when these two fourth graders come up to him and say "We want to be there; get off now”.
Christopher flat out refuses, and, well, the conversation heads downhill from there. Christopher relays that the lunch supervisors had to get involved at the end to resolve the situation and during the ‘disagreement’ Christopher had threatened to beat the kids up as a way to bring things to a quick conclusion. Lunch supervisors have a talk with all; situation diffused.
Some more facts might be in order before we go on:
- Christopher, as you may know, is a big big 3rd grader.
- We know the two fourth graders. They are not so big.
The next day I’m at the school for Matthew’s VIP week (more on this later) and get a chance to ask the supervisor, Mary, what really happened. Christopher had relayed the story accurately; one point he didn’t relay that stuck with Mary was that during the ‘investigation’ part of the intervention the fourth graders were quick to say “He threatened to beat us up!”. Mary asked Christopher if this was true, and Christopher said “Yup, and I’ll do it!”…which, Mary admitted made her laugh.
All of this resulted in a longish talk with Christopher and Matthew with a simple message; you are forbidden from throwing the first punch, but, anything after that, you’re fine by me. The authorities may not be ok with it; you’ll get no complaints from Dad on that score though. The guy can throw the first punch; punches 2 and up are all yours.
Still chuckle, as I’m writing this, that some crazy kids thought Christopher was the kid that they could bully away from something. I’m glad he held his ground.
