Why Boys Fight

I had never really understood why boys fight each other so much. I always thought it was just a kind of barbaric entertainment. But recently I realized that it actually has something to do with our development.

When I was a kid, my brother and I did not get along. Imagine getting along, and now imagine the opposite of getting along. That’s where we were. He was really annoying and I was really mean. I would hurt him, and he would throw a fit and run to my mother. Sometimes we played together, but the next day he would go back to being annoying and I would go back to being mean. We carried on in like fashion from the day he could talk until the day I left for college.

Many months later, I came home for the holidays. My brother challenged me to a duel. He produced the pair of durable plastic lightsabers which the two of us had fought with on several occasions. Of course, I obliged.

It was a chilly day and it had recently rained. It seemed a miracle that all the water hadn’t frozen. We decided to carry out the duel on our trampoline, because being able to jump five feet in the air adds a little spice to any brotherly confrontation. The moment we stepped onto that spongy surface, our socks soaked up a few teaspoons of frigid water and our feet were numb.

We crossed blades. We jumped really high. We wished there was an orchestra and choir belting out “Duel of the Fates” in our yard. However, just when things started to get exciting, I accidentally brought my blade down on my brother’s hand. He yelped. There was blood coming out of his knuckle. He bent down on his knees in a position that was oh, so familiar to me; he was going to cry and the fun was going to be over. I sighed and bounce/jumped towards him to begin consoling and/or talking my way out of trouble.

But at my approach, he looked up. There were tears in his eyes, but he wasn’t crying. I saw in his face that he had made a decision. He wasn’t going to mom this time; he wasn’t going to let me win that easily.

He clutched his weapon and came at me. It hurt pretty badly. I whipped my sword around and brought the fight back to him. After that, many more blows were landed. A few more drops of blood soaked into the trampoline fabric. We swung and parried as fast as our tired and frozen arms could manage. It was exhilarating. I knew that whatever I threw at him, he could take and then give back. I also knew that he wasn’t going to give up and hide behind our parents. Now we were ourselves and nothing more.

We finally went inside when the sun set and our numb fingers couldn’t hold the lightsabers anymore. Mom certainly didn’t understand why we did it, or why we dueled again many more times on my visits home, but we knew and that’s all that mattered.