All this happened back in my eighth-grade year. Or, as I like to refer to it, The Year Of Living Dangerously. Eighth grade was the year I got suspended for calling a teacher a bitch in front of the whole class. (I still say she deserved it. But now I’ll also say it was wrong of me to say it.) It was the year I started taking out the car late at night, without any parent’s knowledge, and drive it around the neighborhood waving to anyone I saw. I never said I was smart that year, did I?

It was the year my hormones were raging. It was not a fun year for anyone. Especially my parents. FSM only knows why they didn’t crate me up and ship me off to some European traveling circus for disposal.

So, yeah, we were arguing all the time. All the time. Finally my mom snapped.

We were standing near the front door, getting in each other’s face and screaming. At length, my mom had had enough. Even though I was a couple of heads taller than her and outweighed her by well over 50 pounds, she decided the only way to get her point through was to slap me on the cheek. She tried. I moved a bit faster than her and grabbed her wrist before she could do it.

I smirked at her and then stepped closer to loom over her. I figured I had the upper hand. Oh, I didn’t know how wrong I was.

My mom twisted around, grabbing my wrist in the process and then proceeded to flip me over onto my back on the floor. She stood there with her mouth agape, staring at me. I laid on the floor, my mouth agape, staring at my mom. I couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe it. It was so absurd we started laughing and couldn’t stop for long, long minutes. After the tension broke, we managed to talk through whatever had been getting under both of our skins.

Even now, years later, heck, decades later, we’ll still get a good laugh out of it. I keep asking for a rematch and she will never agree. She likes to limp along on her walker and shake her fist at me and smile, knowing the one and only time she and I ever completely lost our heads, she came out on top. In a physical confrontation, this small, frail woman totally dominated her weightlifting son.

The funny thing is, though, it’s one of my favorite stories as well. Especially when we’re together and we get to tell the story to folks who’ve never heard it before. Yeah, we do tend to talk a lot. How’d you figure that one out?

We both learned that violence doesn’t solve anything. For one thing, you never know who’s going to come out on top. For another, it’s much easier to talk things through, since you might even end up laughing together. And there’s nothing better for a parent and child.

I still want a rematch, though. I think I can take her now.

– Richard

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