When You Were a Boy

by Edwin L. Sabin

It was a portentous moment.

“Ted Watson. He tripped me on purpose an’ nearly made me fall when I was runnin’, an’ then he told me I da’sn’t back it. But we didn’t fight long, ’cause a man came by an’ stopped us.”

“You can see he scratched his nose, and his collar was torn almost off his shirt,” supplemented your mother.

“I tore his collar, too—an’ I bet he’s goin’ to have a black eye,” you hastened to state, in palliation.

“W-w-well, I’m astonished, John!” asserted your father, very solemnly.

You fastened your eyes upon your plate, and could think of nothing to say in rebuttal. You had stalked homeward a hero, fondly expecting that your parents would be proud of you, who, only nine, had combatted a boy of ten, and were “gettin’ on top”; but witness how they had wet-blanketed you!

“I told him that he ought to have refused to fight, and it would have made the other little boy ashamed,” informed your mother.

“By all means,” approved your father.

Coming from your mother, the advice, while of course absurd, had not seemed so strange; after all, she never had been a boy, and girls didn’t fight; but your father’s traitorous acquiescence goaded you to desperation.

“Did you ever da’sn’t back it when you were a boy like me, papa?” you appealed; and although you were not fully cognizant of the fact, you had him hip and thigh.