Father of the Year awards, here I come!

Get your pen ready to nominate me, Ed U. Cayshun, as father of the year for allowing my sons to work out personal differences the old fashioned way; by beating the be-Jesus out of each other.

Please allow me to elaborate before you call child protective services. It has been about two weeks since the end of the school year and my Mr. Mom duties fully began. In that two week time frame my two oldest sons, six and four years old, have been fighting at least 30 percent of the time. I'm talking about yelling at each other, name calling, throwing things and even the occasional hitting and kicking. With and infant in my hand I'd been trying to referee the melees to no avail.

Yesterday I decided that if they were going to fight I'd let them! However, being the responsible dad I thought that I'd make it a bit safer than fists and toy cars so I bought a water noodle pool toy, cut it in half, taped up a handle made of dowel rod and let the beating commence. The "Battle-Bat" is born!!!

This has really served a great end. They actually enjoy flagellating each other with the soft foam swords and end up laughing about it about two minutes after the fight begins.

This sure takes me back to the good old days when we'd climb the fifty foot monkey bars over asphalt, throw snowballs at each other's heads without wearing a helmet, played tackle football on the playground and settled differences like men; by kicking the living crap out of each other then laughing about it. Remember the 80's?

Ed U. Cayshun

P.S. My ref'ing duties have kept me from posting lately, sorry!