Marquis of Queensbury Rules
By Victor Epp
By now we were moving up the social ladder. Oh yeah, a brand new bungalow in a brand new subdivision in the suburbs, that was us. Well, let me put that into a bit clearer perspective for you. This brand new subdivision was so new; it was just as surprised as anyone else that it even existed. Three new houses almost finished, in a cow pasture were the only testament to the elaborate plans on the brochure. For all intents and purposes we were back on the farm.
Truth be told, moving day should have given me a realistic appreciation for that fateful move from Teulon corner. Rain in the city wouldn't normally have been a problem. After all, you had your paved streets, covered moving vans and all that. This was true for us; well at least up to two and a half blocks of our new house. That's where everything stopped - except the rain. The developers hadn't yet paved the streets so it was shank's mare from there on in. Even with my connections in the Rotary Club I couldn't persuade the Security Storage guy to drive any further. Well, it was a long day to say the least. And as old man Krahn, the house builder was to discover over and over, the wife's 'delicate' condition at the time didn't make it any easier. In fact, I've got a notion she was the reason he finally went out of the building business.
As time went by, our neighbors established themselves as well. That is to say, the other two cow pasture dwellers, one family on either side of us. On the north side was a traveling salesman for an auto parts company. He was a tall, lean guy with a booming voice. Likeable enough, he was. His wife was very pleasant too. But his boy was another story. A couple of years older than our kid, he was given to a lot more adventure than was good for him, particularly when it came to playing with matches.
Wellsir, as is bound to happen from time to time, the two boys had a disagreement about something. Darned if I know what it was. In fact, they likely didn't know either, not that it mattered much. As can be expected, given the difference in size, ours got the worst of it. He came in the house; tearfully complaining about the kid next door, and looking somewhat the worse for wear.
The wife never did like the neighbor's brat, as she called him. She thought he was mean. She didn't like his obsession with fire either, and by God, she wasn't going to put up with her little boy being pushed around. It was time to teach the neighbors a lesson about how to bring up their delinquent kid and if I wasn't going to do it, by gum she was!
Well, she did. It was a Friday afternoon as I recall. It would have to be because Richard was home from his sales trip. He was out in the driveway firing up the barbecue and enjoying a martini or two and being a typically upwardly mobile suburbanite in his shorts and muscle shirt. The last thing on his mind was a pint sized Tasmanian devil ripping into him with a string of cuss words the like of which I hadn't heard since grade school.
The neighbor stood his ground like the man he was, all six foot two of him. The wife, maybe a foot or more shorter if she stood on tiptoes wasn't giving up either. I guess what finally took the wind out of their sails was the fact that in the middle of the screaming match they noticed that the boys had gone off in the field across the street and were having a ball chasing frogs. Nobody ever brought up anything about who was acting like adults and who was acting like children. We didn't have to. It was a mute point.
After that I made two rules, probably the best I ever thought up. I told the kid that if I ever found him starting a fight, he'd have me to deal with. That was rule number one. Rule number two was if he ever got into a fight he didn't start he'd better finish it. Otherwise rule number one would apply. It probably accounts for him not getting into too many fracases after that, although there were a couple of instances of note that are the reason I got into remembering this in the first place.
Wouldn't you know it; the first one was caused by a girl. She was a classmate in either kindergarten or grade one. Her name was Tammy and she was a character straight out of Charles Dickens - a scrawny, mousy haired little slip of a thing with a giant crush on our boy. You couldn't help but smile when she came around.
Now just think for a minute about the relationship boys and girls at the age of six and seven might have. You're not talking about mushy romantic stuff or even friendly play. What happens is that boys throw things at girls. It's kind of reverse courting - an attention getter of sorts. Unfortunately, this behavior can sometimes backfire and lead to some of the most spectacular brouhaha’s you could ever imagine. Girls have a way of triggering that sort of thing, whether by accident or by design.
That was exactly what happened one fine Sunday afternoon. It was ironically enough, Boxing Day. My folks were over at the house for dinner and the kid was down the road playing with his pal in the snow. The doorbell rings and Tammy is there all starry eyed and wiping her runny nose on her sleeve, wanting to know if our boy can come out to play. Well, he's not home I tell her, and like a dummy I point to where the boys are. Of course, I can see them in our still sparse subdivision. They're building a snow fort. Off goes Tammy, undaunted, to find her man.
You can already suspect what's coming, can't you? Poor Tammy suddenly becomes the unwitting target for lumps of snow. The two boys, one on either side of the street are pelting her left and right. I think that she was either skinny enough or fast enough that they didn't do her any harm, but what followed was the most amazing spectacle you could ever want to witness.
Both boys had a pretty good throwing arm, active as they were. It was only their aim that needed work. It just happened that one of the snow lumps our boy had picked up was more ice than snow. When he whipped it at Tammy, he missed and caught his friend right in the forehead. Well, there was enough raw pain in that chunk of ice to dissolve the friendship right then and there. At least it would have been if his friend's older brother hadn't been on hand to take charge.
Now we were inside the house all cozy and warm so we couldn't hear the conversation but near as we could tell somebody needed some satisfaction. My best guess is that the older brother had been sent out to look after his younger sibling and had to take care of matters himself. He was probably of an age where he had been reading about fair play and duels and all that stuff. I'm only speculating of course, but when I was about that old I knew all about Robin Hood and Sir Lancelot and honor in battle and all that noble fair play bumph.
In any event, what we saw from our ringside seat in our living room was these two seven year olds, all bundled up in snow suits, squaring off like two Victorian boxers while the older brother refereed. They would go at it hammer and tong until somebody threw a low blow or pushed the other one down. The older brother would make them break contact and start over again. Every once in a while the three of them would sit down in the snow bank and rest. Then they'd be at it again. It was all Marquis of Queensbury rules, right and proper. It seems to me they even shook hands when it was over.
This is how it went for a whole hour, all the way down the block until they got to our house. By then they were so tired, they'd forgotten what the fight was all about. And Tammy, having gotten her dose of attention from her seven year-old man went on to other things. In the meantime we'd had the best hour of entertainment we could possibly have hoped for. Muhammad Ali himself couldn't have done better.
Well, I've got to give the kid his due. He never did have to deal with the old man over rule number one or rule number two.
