A few minutes later, LH asks, "Dad, can I go over to Mr. James' yard?" "Did they invite you over?" "No sir, I just wanted to see if I could go play with their kids."

My neighbors have always been friendly with us. They brought us a gift when my daughter was born. They always set aside some extra candy for the kids at Halloween. We let each other know if we're going out of town for a while and keep an eye on each other's house. "Make sure its alright with Mr. James before you play." "Yes, sir!" he said an trotted off, happily.

I finished up with the brake pads and went inside to wash the brake dust and brake cleaner and brake lube off my hands. It had started to sprinkle outside so I went back out make sure LH wasn't in the neighbor's house. It's one thing to go next door and play with the kids in the yard, quite another to go inside someone's house uninvited. He wasn't in the yard, so I started over to the neighbor's house to tell him to get his butt back outside. However, as I rounded the corner of my house, I saw him standing under one of our trees, looking at the neighbor's house. I said "Whatcha doin,' bud?" and noticed, as he turned around, that he was crying. We met half way and I asked "What's wrong?"

He wouldn't look at me, instead he looked at the ground. He let go in that way that kids will when they're trying to hold it in but can't once they're around someone they feel comfortable with. He still wouldn't answer. I repeated, "What is wrong." Immediately, my mind raced through the possibilities; he got in trouble, he broke something and was told to leave, he did something he wasn't supposed to do, the neighbor's kids were leaving and he was upset he had to come home. Still no answer. He just stood there staring at the ground, fists clenched, crying. The sprinkle was turning to drizzle.

"Son, you need to tell me what's wrong." I stressed the syllable "need" in that "if you're hurt, I've got to know/if you did something wrong, you better tell me right fucking now" way that most father's have picked up over years of trial and error. I'm on the verge of impatience. This is when he picked his eyes up and looked at me. Choking back tears, "Those kids told me I stink!"

Here's where the difficult part of fatherhood comes in. My immediate gut reaction was to tell him "Son, it doesn't matter what those little fuckers say. The worth of their opinion is just a little shy of being exactly jack-shit." Nah, that was no good. Then that smart-ass little devil on my shoulder must have been whispering in my ear, because I thought to tell him, that next time just sa, "Yeah, I probably do. I'll need to take a bath later. Hey! It's too bad you can't take a bath for being a dickhead. You'll never be able to wash that off, I guess." That wouldn't work either. Then I thought about taking the psychiatrist approach; "Son, the only reason that kid said that was because he doesn't feel like he is important and feels the need to tear down everyone he perceives as being a little better than him, just so he can feel better." But, hell, the last thing you want to hear when you're mad is fucking logic.

So, I held my tongue, tempered my reaction, and dispensed what is probably the oldest piece of advise a father can ever give out to his son..."It doesn't matter what they say. If they're going to treat you like that, you don't need to waste your time with them."

But just let that little cocksucker accidentally toss a ball over the fence into my yard...

UPDATE: Sitting down to supper last night, I asked Lil' Heavyarms the specifics of what happened to him on Sunday. Turns out, the kids were telling him that he stunk at dodgeball. DAMN! I told him that the next time some kids in the neighborhood are giving him a hard time about his dodgeball skills, just bring them on over to the house and they can play against him and me. I got picked on in school a lot so one of the skills I perfected was a laser-guided throwing arm when it came to dodgeball. There was nothing more satisfying than the sound those red kickball's made when I was bouncing them off the head of some dick that was flicking my ear on the bus the day before.

Or we could have played them in football. Put a NERF ball in his hand, limit your routes to about 10 yards and the kid looks like John Elway.