My older brother summed up an aspect of our childhood. He was asked, “What did you do growing up?
His reply was "playing sports and getting in fights.” With three brothers, he was spot on. To be accurate, we also ate, slept, and called each other names as well.
When I was about 5 years-old and my older brother was around 7 years-old, we were given big red puffy boxing gloves. Nowadays, such a cool gift is probably outlawed. They were fun. We would box now and again. In general, I would get clobbered and storm off angry. It was usually just body shots and no face stuff. Imagine a crappy game of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots where one player always gets "socked". This continued for a while.
On some Saturdays, we would watch The Wide World of Sports. In the opening credits, I always liked the skier who crashes at the finish as a voiceover says, “And the agony of defeat.” It was sort of like me boxing. On Wide World, they would show boxing matches like Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, and George Foreman among others. These guys pounded each other with body and face shots. I remember the announcers saying “he was hit in the nose” and “look at his eye.” Back then, when that was said, all I could think of was the song –
Head, shoulders, knees and toes Knees and toes . . . Head, shoulders, knees and toes Eyes and ears and mouth and nose
When my mother went grocery shopping, my father would watch us. The rules were a lot different with him. We didn’t have to fear the wooden salad spoon of redirection, and we usually did a lot of running around and broke something.
One night, when my mother was shopping, my older brother and I wanted to show Dad how we boxed. It would be our first match in front of an audience. We set up chairs and wore bathrobes to the rings. My record at that point was about 0 - 30. And I was about to be 0 – 31. The robes came off, and we sized each other up. Then, it hit me:
Head, shoulders, knees and toes Knees and toes . . . Head, shoulders, knees and toes Eyes and ears and mouth and nose
My father made a bell sound. I blasted my brother right in the nose. He fell back. Blood started to trickle out. We were all shocked. My dad announced, “He was hit with a Power Punch. Let the fight continue.”
After looking at my brother’s face, my win was going to quickly become a loss. I ran out of the room and down the hallway. I got in the bathroom and slid the bolt lock over. Almost immediately, the pounding on the outside started and it wasn’t a tricker treater. I sat down on the toilet seat cover. I guess this is the price you pay. I was here for a while.
Needless to say, you can’t stay in a bathroom the rest of your life. Unfortunately, the fairy tale ending: "of Happily Ever After" never panned out. We all know what eventually happened.
Although, “eyes and ears and mouth and nose” came in handy later.