THE FINAL BATTLE

Thanksgiving 2010. It was a nice, cool day. Just right for a hoodie to start. The trees were all the beautiful colors of fall in Missouri. Red, yellow, orange with some brown coming in. I put my casserole in the car with my weapons I had grabbed for the battle. I was looking forward to it more than usual. This year it was at Joe's house.

As I pulled up I was impressed with the size of the yard. This battle will be epic! I remember thinking. As I got out of the car I could smell dinners cooking all over the neighborhood. Too bad I had to fight for my meal. I looked up as Joe came out of the house. Obviously he was taking this particular year's battle more serious than I was. I wondered why.

“Hi Son,” I said

“Hi Mom are you ready? What did you bring?” he asked.

“ I brought my 10” dagger and my skull sword”

“ I’m using my dual long tooth daggers”

I told him I was going to take the casserole in and say hi to his wife and friends. When I went in his wife Amanda asked how sword fights on Thanksgiving started. I explained after DJ died nobody would swordfight Joe with real swords so I did. Thanksgiving was just we both always were tired of dealing with his dad so we would go battle. With that I headed out.

As soon as I picked up my dagger he charged me. The sun glinted off his weapon and I had to look away for a second. Just long enough to get cut on my forearm. I wiped it on my jeans and rubbed some spit on it.

“want a bandaid or something?” he asked.

“ I’m not the one wearing white Little Boy. Why ARE you wearing your Kung full uniform anyway?” I inquired.

“ I just wanted, to! Is that OK?” he replied

Oh good. He thought had something to prove. We always had an interesting relationship. D.J. was his hero. Joe is a man's man. His dad never was real involved with the boys even though he lived with us. So I played all roles. Joe got resentful at times subcociously.

We fought back and forth for a while. He had been practicing I could tell. He was moving quicker.

“Come on, Mom, you’re slowing down. Do we need to stop? Are you getting tired? “

“ I’m doing just fine Son, just trying to kill you so I can eat”

“ Hey Mom check it out”

And with that he jumped off a Rubbermaid stepstool he had in the yard. It promptly broke, sending him flying. He dropped his weapons and took off running. I grabbed them and gave chase. We crashed through the house scaring Amanda and her friend Amy half to death. We then flew through the front door.

Unfortunately the next door neighbor had his sprinkler on full blast. We slipped and slid and landed in an unflatteringly position. Joe, in his white uniform, looked like he slid into second base. I didn’t fare much better. My Snoopy shirt had a new hole in it and I was very thankful I didn't have long hair. I did have the presence of mind to jump on top of Joe and stab him in the heart twice, thus killing him and winning the day. I was highly impressed. Instead of throwing a fit about it and yelling foul, he took it look like a man. It was a lesson I had learned with Joe. I always assumed bad losers were a product of bad parenting. They aren’t they are born that way sometimes and you can’t get it out of them. So this was a huge step forward.