Pugilistic Brothers

a Saturday Story

I can tell you this now because Dad has died and, as far as I know, the politically correct mafioso has no possible recourse against him. Not that I imagine he would have cared if they tried when he was alive, but I would have felt bad for having put him in that spot. Now that I think about it, they couldn’t cancel him from anything since he wasn’t a part of anything from which a man could be canceled. Any social media attention would have fallen on deaf ears. I’m not aware of him ever using a computer.

The only thing I can remotely imagine coming from it would have been a visit by some local media type or a minor protest outside his home and that would have been quite entertaining to watch him deal with those distractions. Now, I believe I held out too long and should have told this publicly much earlier.

No use crying over spilled milk, as they say. So, here goes…

My siblings and I used to fight…a lot. I have been asked by parents of children who fight with each other if I fought with my siblings, and I always answer that we did and it hasn’t affected our affection for each other as we have grown older. I love my brothers and sister, and I think they love me. We get along fine when we get together. We chat back and forth on the phone and in group texts. We don’t argue about stuff.

We don’t fight anymore…But boy, did we back then.

My younger brother, Bob, and I traded our share of blows over the years. I always say “younger” brother and not “little” brother because he was never my little brother. Although about two years younger than me, he was never smaller than me. I was built more like Mom, and he got the Dad genes. Because I was older I kept almost even with him in height, but he always outdid me in brawn. All that to say, we were evenly matched when it came to fighting with each other.

As we grew older, Mom’s ability to keep some control over our battles diminished. She was petite and that limited her refereeing skills. After a stretch of fights between Bob and me that she had lost control of, she ratted us out to Dad. She had enough of it and wanted him to do something about it.

He came home from work one evening, heard mom’s tale of woes, told Bob and me to go out to the front yard, brought a lawn chair out, sat down, and said, “Alright boys, you like fighting so much, get after it. The winner gets a nickel.”

Well, at that moment, neither of us was in a fighting mood and the whole scenario seemed awkward and contrived. We just stared at each other, but Dad wasn’t having it. We were going to fight until we got all the fight out of our system.

Eventually, one of us pushed the other a little (I don’t remember who pushed whom), and that led to a pushback and some chatter from the one-man audience egging us on. Then there was a fist strike and a retaliatory strike. Grappling and falling to the ground, further blows ensued. Blood was drawn. There was a break for first aid, after which the battle recommenced. This continued until obvious exhaustion was setting in.

Dad finally had enough and asked us if we had had enough. We had.

He said, “I hope you boys got that out of your system. Go get yourselves cleaned up.”

I don’t recall who, if either of us, got the nickel. I do recall we quit fighting around Mom. No, we didn’t quit fighting, but we did give her a reprieve from having to watch it.

Someone asked me once if my Dad ever spanked me and my brothers. Yes, he did. And, at least once, he had me and my brother spank each other.