Minister of Education Report

It would probably be breaking the Law Now

            With the observance of my baby brother’s latest middle aged birthday, my thoughts run back to those long gone, anything but halcyon, days of our youth. No one that knows him now would ever guess that he was strong minded and wilfull in those days. But the biblical song about the three Hebrew children which says “they would not bow: they would not bend; they would not burn, could have been applied to him. He just did not have a King of Babylon to contend with. But that was okay, because the local bullies would work just fine.

            In any case three of them came over to my grandmother’s house one day after school intent on “cleaning Timothy’s clock,” so to speak. What they would find out that day was I had been taught to box in R.A.’s back at Evergreen Baptist Church in Warner Robins, Georgia, and I had taught Tim. The little bullies thought the would grab him and wrestle him down, but they ran into a little fellow who could use his fists. (He did not do it in Christian love I have to confess.) He knocked all three of them down, and every time one of them tried to get away he would wallop them some more. A great lesson was administered to three little hard heads on that day. I enjoyed watching every minute of it.

            Thinking back to that event, I realize that three fellows got stopped cold before they got older and really got into some trouble. They tried to be tough guys, but they straight away ran into some-

body who was just a little bit tougher that could handle all three. What would have happened to them had they gotten away with being bullies? If the same event happened today my brother would have likely had a criminal record for fighting back and I would have been charged, perhaps as an adult, (I was 16) for not stopping it. Don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating violence or children fighting. But what I am pointing out is that when confrontations occur there is an insane attitude in our society that allows people to not learn lessons early. The result is that later on the costs of their folly is higher.