Kill Them With Kindness

Another post in a series on Famous Family Sayings

One of the ways Mom and Dad tried to help us get along was by the Golden Rule: “Treat others as you would like to be treated.” In a family of nine, that was definitely a great way to live because we really couldn’t be fighting all the time. Oh, the noise! So we did the best we could and tried to get along. However, kids will be kids. We did stupid things, we said stupid things and sometimes we even got in fights. If the Silver Rule was to “Turn the other cheek”, then the Bronze Rule, though somewhat lesser known, was “Kill them with kindness.” If someone was bothering you, or giving you a hard time, or heaven forbid wanted to fight, we were told to “Kill them with kindness.”

I can remember plenty of times when we were playing street hockey, football, wiffle ball, or any of the other assorted games we played in our neighborhood, there was an argument. In the heat of the battle, the following kinds of things were screamed at the top of someone’s lungs: It never went in, it hit the post! You were out of bounds when you caught it! I didn’t swing and miss, I just barely ticked it! I called time because a car was coming! We certainly weren’t following the Bronze Rule in our middle of the street clashes, but most of the time somebody gave in or gave up, and the game went on. However, there were times that someone had had too much of somebody cheating or whining and they almost came to blows. They wanted to kill each other with something but it wasn’t kindness.

It happened to me once. One guy who participated in our epic competitions was a year older than me and about six inches taller than me, and he always had to get his way. Now that I think of it, he was taller than everybody that played in those games. Anyway, if he was losing, you knew he was going to pull something out of nowhere to try and gain the advantage. If you took the ball away in street hockey, you slashed him. If you scored a touchdown, you were offside. One day toward the end of a football game I went out for a pass, he pushed me down from behind before the ball even got there, and then triumphantly yelled, “Incomplete!” Having had enough of his bogus penalties and cheating all day, I jumped up, pushed him back and screamed “Interference!” in his face (of course, my calling of penalties was always justified).

After a couple of more pushes back and forth and some more yelling, our fists were suddenly up in the air and we were ready to rumble. Instead of “Killing him with kindness” I had some other things on my mind that may have worked:

• A punch of encouragement to the gut. Though not as strong as “Killing him with kindness”, a well-placed punch to the midsection could be just what the doctor ordered – for the one doing the punching, not the one receiving.
• A heart felt body slam to the ground. Nothing says “You’re a good friend” better than that. Probably not the best option though, seeing as he was about six inches taller than me.
• A choke hold of good cheer. If I couldn’t “Kill him with kindness” maybe I could have just made him lose consciousness for a minute. That would have cheered me up.
• A karate chop of compassion to the solar plexus. I should have thought about how hard it must have been to have to cheat and lie in order to always win. Knocking the wind out of him may have helped me have a little more compassion. 

Well, none of that happened. Not one punch was thrown because the two of us waited for the other to throw the first punch, which never came. What did come was his older sister, who pushed us apart, gave us a talking to, and then dragged him home, yelling at him the whole way. After that day we were all way more afraid of her than him.

If I had followed the “Kill them with kindness” rule, I probably would have gotten in a lot less trouble, because there was often someone around that bothered me or gave me a hard time –  brothers and sisters included! On the flip side, with all those people I would have been killing with kindness, that would have also made me a mass murderer. 

Spring Already?

I know it’s only mid-March, but spring is in the air. It’s not just because Spring Training for baseball is up and running, or because the NHL regular season is coming to an end, or because there’s about 20,000 birds in my yard and its surroundings every morning. It’s mostly due to the mild winter we’ve had. It really already feels like spring.

I’ve enjoyed this winter. I haven’t used the snow blower once this season and I’ve only had to shovel snow twice, and that was more like pushing the light, fluffy snow off the driveway. It hasn’t been very cold either, with only a few days where the temperatures have been below 20 degrees. If this is the effect of global warming, then bring it on! I could handle ten more just like this one. Of course, this is from my perspective as a middle-aged man. As a kid I would have absolutely hated this winter.

The ponds near my house never even froze this winter. Well, maybe they got a thin layer of ice on the top, but they never froze enough for any winter activities. There was no ice fishing this winter, no snowmobiles racing across the ice and snow, and most importantly, no ice skating. Hockey on the frozen ponds was one of the major things that got me through winter as kid. We’d race home from school, dump the books, get our gear and get an hour or two in before it was too dark to see in front of you. On weekends we’d be at the pond from 9am until it was dark, with a quick break for lunch around noon. I don’t think there was ever a winter we didn’t get in a lot of pond hockey from November to March. That would have been unthinkable.

We also got a lot more snow than we do now. If the ponds were buried beneath a pile of snow, we’d shovel it off or use sheets of plywood and push it out of the way to make an area big enough for a decent game. Snow really didn’t stop us, unless there was just too much to move and then we’d wait a few days or a week and then move the snow. While we were waiting, we’d be sledding, building snow forts for snowball fights or playing street hockey when the road was clear. If we missed a day or two of school, even better! That left us more time to be doing fun stuff. At least it was fun then; now, not so much. 

I just can’t imagine going through the whole winter as a kid and not being able to go sledding, have snowball fights or play ice hockey. Street hockey wasn’t a bad short-term solution, but it was nowhere near as good as ice hockey. If you’ve ever been hit by one of those orange street hockey balls or pucks when it is cold outside, you know what pain is. Maybe that's why we used tennis balls that had lost their bounce. Somehow, getting hit with a puck while playing ice hockey never seemed as bad as getting hit with one of those street hockey balls. Sledding down our own Mount Everest was always fun, as was the hot chocolate and roaring fire when we were done. Those were the carefree days of childhood.

But as the temperature outside climbs into the 60’s and there’s not even a hint of any snow around my area, I just have to smile. There’s no sadness here on my part. I don’t skate on the ponds anymore, I haven’t gone sledding since the kids were little and the last time I had a mini snowball fight my shoulder hurt for two days. Honestly, I’d rather be sitting on the back deck in the warm sunshine than be sitting in a cold pile of snow after slipping and falling. These are the not-so-carefree days of adulthood. Call it the year without a winter or just an early spring, it makes no difference. Spring is in the (warm) air.   

Get Out of the Way!

Something is wrong in the animal world. It may not be happening everywhere, but at least in my neighborhood it is. It seems that animals are not afraid of us humans like they used to be. Birds, for example, are no longer afraid of people. It used to be if you walked out of your house, they would fly away. Now you walk out of your house and maybe they’ll stop what they’re doing and look at you. If you walk toward them you get some attention, but they’re still not moving. Only when you get right near them do they fly away.

Driving is even worse with birds. It used to be that once a bird could see you coming down the road, they would fly away. Now you’re coming at them at 45 miles per hour and they don’t even blink an eye. You get about 25 feet away and maybe they hop off to the side a little, but not fly. You get about 10 feet away and it’s like they’re playing chicken – is the human going to stop before I need to fly? I have been driving at times like this when I’ve actually said “Fly!” out loud, sometimes more than once. When they finally fly up out of the road their little legs are still dangling when they pass over the windshield to safety. That’s how close they are to getting hit; their landing gear isn’t even up yet. What’s with the hopping in the road? If I could fly, I wouldn’t be hopping. Just get out of the way.

The same thing has happened with other animals, too, not just birds. Cats, squirrels, possum and critters you only see at night, none of them get out of the way until the very last minute.  I’m not about to crash my car to avoid one of these guys, and I have hit a squirrel before, but why the defiance and refusal to get out of the road?

When we were kids, we played sports in the street. We played whiffle ball, street hockey, kick ball, catch, pretty much anything in the street in front of my house. We didn’t get a significant amount of traffic on our street, mostly just the people who lived on the street and the occasional visitors. My parents had always told us to not only get out of the road when a car was coming, but to actually get onto the sidewalk. On our street, both sides had sidewalks. When we were younger, up to about 10 years old, we did what they had told us and got onto the sidewalk when a car came. However, as we got older we started just moving to the side of the street and not onto the sidewalk. This made some people slow down more than they normally would have, which sometimes got us upset because they were holding up our game.

As we got to our teen years, we got bolder (or more stupid if you prefer). When we were playing and someone yelled “Car coming”, if we were in the middle of a play, we just kept on playing. Sometimes we didn’t move until the people were pretty close to us or until they beeped their horn. Some people smiled and waved once we finally got out of the road and let them pass, others scowled at us like we were criminals in a police lineup. To get back at those people when we were playing street hockey, we’d pass the ball under the car to the other side as they went by. We thought this was hilarious and that we were pretty cool when the ball made it to the other side without getting run over. That is, until someone gave the ball too much lift and it hit the side of the car. Needless to say, the driver was not at all happy with us and told us they were going to speak to our parents about the incident. Whether they did or not I really don’t know. However, we were more careful after that…for about a week, and then we went back to our normal routine.   

A thought recently came to me out of nowhere after one of these defiant bird encounters. Maybe those birds that won’t fly, those squirrels that won’t run and the other animals that won’t get out of the road, are teenagers. They’ve gotten bolder, so when one of their buddies yells “Car coming!” in their language, they just keep on doing what they’re doing. Maybe they’re all sitting there laughing at us, thinking how cool they are that they just missed being hit. Or maybe they’re thinking how hilarious it is that they made someone stomp on the brakes and perhaps swerve out of their way. Perhaps, as in the human world, no one in the animal world wants some old guy in a car holding up the game. Even if that game is a game of chicken.