Fight Club

It is interesting to raise boys. By interesting, I mean an experience in sheer terror/confusion/dismay/hilarity due to shenanigans (as an aside, I recently very firmly told a patient and his girlfriend that there “WILL BE NO MORE SHENANIGANS.” Though justified in its utterance, my humiliating use of the word shenanigans will forever be burned into the embarrassment center of my brain. And now yours, because I shared it).

At any rate, I thought I had some understanding of what clowns boys can be, what with the peeing into the squirt gun incident, the tossing items into the ceiling fan incident, the Five Cereals game, and the peeing out the bonfire incident(s). It is clear to me that I do not now and may never have any kind of handle on what goes through teenage boys’ heads.

Background: About 3 or 4 months ago, my elder son had told me that his friend and another kid had had a backyard boxing match. Informally, you know. For fun, apparently. My son’s friend lost the fight.

More background: A mom I know came up to me after a basketball game to inform me that her son had lied to her about a thing over the weekend which involved my son. She said that my son had been somewhere, involved in a boxing match/underground fight scheme. And her son tried to go by lying to her. It was a whole mom conversation, I’m trying to edit here for brevity. And for boringness.

Ok actual story: So I asked my son, who had told me he was staying overnight at another friend’s house, what had actually happened on Saturday night. He enthusiastically and openly recounted the events of the night. He was indeed at the boxing match that the mom told me about.

So my son’s fighting friend, whom we will call Justin, had told someone that he would re-fight the other kid, whom we will call Big Bang, if he got at least 40$ for it. Whereupon another kid organized a full on backyard underground boxing match. My son acted as manager for his friend Justin. He went on to describe the scene. Here is what I gathered:

The fighters had walk out music. They were each followed by an entourage. They wore bathrobes and headphones. The managers were interviewed. Though it was night, my son wore sunglasses the entire time. The fighters weighed in, Justin at 280, Big Bang at 355. The fighters faced off like before a fight in the UFC. The managers put vaseline on the fighters’ faces. They went to the corners of the ring.

*I interrupted at this point, having shaken myself out of a near-stupor from the sheer wtf-ness of this story. “Dude. Where the eff was this?” Son: “At Kaden’s house. His stepdad was there, he made us sign a thing.” Me: Silence, unable to respond. Me, now able to respond: “Dude. What if someone got hurt?” Son: “Mom we had mats. And I wrapped their hands.” Me: literally unable to speak. *

So the fight commenced. This time Justin was the clear winner by TKO (oh by the way there were judges) after 2 or 3 one-minute rounds.

My husband was in the room reading, listening to this conversation. He was choking back some degree of laughter. I was not there quite yet. I had a much greater distance to leap, having never been a teenage boy.

I asked my son, “Dude. Just so I know where we are, developmentally, can you tell me if at any point you thought this was maybe not such a good idea?”

Son, looks inward for a moment: “No…no, I really did not think that.”

Me: “Because that is a pretty illegal activity, I think.”

Son: “What? Seriously? Mom I had no idea.”

Whereupon we thoroughly discussed the logic and thought process behind engaging in activities with risk involved, and how one must first assess the risk and then possibly consider whether it might be too great for the potential payoff. It was way too much but still had to be said. I mean operating under the assumption that he can both remember to stop and assess risk and then do a cost/benefit analysis is optimistic to the point of foolishness, I’d say.

I summed up with the following: “So hey, then, dude, here’s what I need from you. I need you to start taking a moment, just a brief moment, to pause and think, ‘Is this a good idea?’ I’m not saying I want or expect you to not do the dumb thing, I just need the teeniest bit of progress in the pausing and thinking. Just pause. It will be challenging because you have shit for a frontal lobe, but just remember to pause. Say it with me. PAUSE.”

So this is our standard now. It is evident that I cannot assume that people will not participate in illegal underground backyard fighting rings. So I have to say it. “Remember, no participating in illegal underground backyard fighting rings.”

“I know, Mom.”

P.S. A few days after the fight I cleaned out my car. I found a large industrial spotlight and multiple pieces of construction paper signage that said “Round 1” “Round 2” and so on. I asked if there were ring girls. He said yes and named them. I asked what they were wearing. He said sweatshirts and jeans. Thank goodness for that, at least.