After commenting on this topic, I remembered one of our family fights on a
Thanksgiving that still makes me laugh yet today.  My son Trenton was 20
years old at the time and my son Everett was 15 years old.  Everett had been
taking Karate for a few months but he was still two years away from getting
his first black belt.  The last time I had given Everett a whippin, he had
been about 12 and he was pretty big even then.  So now, as I said, he is
fifteen.  I just had given my son, Trenton, 30 days to find a place to live
because he was getting too big to live with mom and dad and he was becoming
disrespectful.  In fact, I had kicked the basement door off its hinges,
thank God for cowboy boots, because he had walked out on me while I was
talking to me and gone downstairs and shut his door.  That door, to this
day, won't hang right and we even put a new door into the frame so there is
something rong with the frame.  I was smart though.  If it had been anything
less than a hollow core door, I would have never kicked it.  Anyhow,
Trenton, at this age, thought he was pretty smart.  He was but I was still
his dad and Sandy was still his mom.  By the way, Trenton was 15 years old
the last time I whipped him for talking back to his mom.  Anyhow, somehow,
after eating Thanksgiving as a family, Everett and Trenton got into an
argument.  Trenton was trying to tell Everett how to live and what to do and
it snow balled into one big argument.  Everett jumped up and told his bigger
brother that if he didn't shut his moth, he was going to pound him into the
ground.  Trenton told him to try it.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  You don't
challenge Everett.  I was sitting in the living room listening to the whole
thing and kind of enjoying not being in the argument for once.  Well,
Everett was on his feet and began pushing his older brother all around the
living room.  They were both yelling and I was laughing about it all until I
suddenly realized, Trenton was on the edge of being pounded into dirt.  So,
being the good father that I am, I figured I best put a stop to this.  So I
started yelling just like they were at each other.  That didn't work at all.
So, realizing my oldest son was about to meet his Maker, I jumped up and
dove head first into the fight.  As I said, I hadn't spanked Everett since
he was 12 years old and I could even hold him down back then.  Well, when I
dove into the fight, they were pushing at each other and I tried grabbing
Everett to pull him back.  Sure, fat chance.  Everett was committed.  He
shook me off like I wasn't even there.  I finally had to wrap my arms around
him from behind, discovering in the process his chest was way bigger around
than mine now, and I halled backwards with all my strength to separate them.
It was no easy task because I was still half laughing about the whole thing.
Anyway, I have already mentioned how Everett paid 750 dollars for his older
brother, his wife, and two little girls, to fly out here for this Christmas
so they are friends now.  Thank the Lord.  If they got into it now, I'd
probably break an arm trying to separate them or have a heart attack due to
the strain.

Phil.