I've just got to get this off my chest! My 12 year old lad was involved in a fight with a 13 year old today. I'm a parent who doesn't encourage or condone fighting, but I understand that it's a sort of rites of passage for boys ( I used to be one a long while ago!) What really is fucking making me mad at the moment, and has been all day, is that the lad didn't even land one punch on my lad. What the little shithouse tried to do instead is gouge his eyes out. And I literally mean just that! He's got bruises and nail marks all around his eyes where the little twat was trying to pinch and bite and scratch at his eyes, and trying to stick his thumb into his eyes. What sort of lad can't throw a punch but acts like a sick fucking animal and would deliberately try to blind someone? On top of that, my lad was just with one of his mates. The other lad was with about 10 other lads, and told my lad and his mate that if he beat him, they would all kick fuck out of the two of them. I'm just relieved that my lad is just not more seriously hurt as he really could have either lost an eye, or lost the sight in it. It's not nice to think of your children fighting, but it's even worse to think of them getting hurt, whether it's in a fight or it's an accident.
The thing is, I was the proverbial lover, not a fighter at school. I would try to sort anything out with words before anything else. Inevitably though, things sometimes got to the point where it ended up in a fight. But in all my life, I have never ever seen a lad try to scratch and gouge another lads eyes out. EVER. Has the world really changed that much that when a fight happens, it's not a fair fight? That someone turns up with a crew of lads and says things like if you beat me, they'll fucking kill you? Not that long ago, it was a lot of punches thrown by each of the lads until someone either got hurt or backed down. But now it seems like it's a case of just forget about any sort of playground rules, just be as cowardly and dirty as you possibly can. If that had happened back when I was in school, the lad would have had everyone turn their backs on him, just like happened to one lad who kept biting someone in a fight. I know there are already plenty of examples of things changing for the worse, and this might just seem like one more symptom of that, but this just made me feel sick to the pit of my stomach. I know the moral of the story is not to fight, and believe me, not just as a dad but in my profession too, the last thing I would ever want is for my kids, or anyone else's kids, to fight, but I realise that sometimes it simply can't be avoided. If my lad had tried to walk away today, they said they were all going to jump him. If he battered him to a pulp, they were going to jump him. He felt that the only way out was to fight to some extent, but not hit the lad too hard. What sort of a fucking quandary is that for a 12 year old to deal with? Luckily, he's a socially and emotionally well developed kid, so he took what he felt was the only option left open to him. He said he didn't really hit him hard until he started gouging at his eyes, and then sort of lost his temper a bit to protect himself and started punching him, at which point the other lad ran away. I'm rambling a bit now cos this whole episode has really sickened and upset me. It's sickening to think that there are kids out there like this, and even more sickening to think that the parents of kids like these are allowed to have kids, because they do such a Grade A job of rearing them.
