original little hellraisers

he punched me. right across the face.

worse yet, he did it right after kissing me on the cheek. this sweet little boy, leans in, doesn’t pucker or anything, but gently touches his mouth to your face in the way someone with not-fully-developed-fine-tuned-motor-skills would. then he leans back and hits me.

it was more of a slap, but still. that little &@*! hit me. and then… he laughed about it. it’s like i’m reliving some odd moment from grade school, except my enormous big brother is not here to fend off the attackers.

granted, he has little hands and if i wanted to attack back it would be easy. of course, i don’t. but in my mind, my adolescent self is beating the daylights out those adolescent brats who tried to pick on me when tom wasn’t around.

then, the paranoid 3/4ths of my brain kicks in and i start thinking ahead, say 15 years from now when he’s going to do this for real. said older brother will be way too old at that point to defend me. i have no interest in collecting knives or guns or anything of the like. so… how the hell am i going to fend him off when he has actual muscles? it’s almost a rule that every son tries to kick his dad’s ass. at least those i know.

here’s the game plan:

1) only let him play sports that develop the lower part of his body… not sure what they are, but they must exist. something entirely leg driven. i may have to invent the sport, but i’ll think of something…

2) go buy karate and judo gear, but don’t actually take the classes. win the mind-game.

3) in the dead of night, when he’s in the rebellious phase, play back the sound of him crying at random hours. wake him up the way he woke us up. teach him that he, too, was a pain in the ass and was dependent on someone else in-so-much to change his crappy diapers… this one is king. this one is fool proof. this one will win the war.

must. time. this. right.