Monday

The day started with the boy losing DS privileges and ended with him owing the Wife 75 push-ups. The lass fared little better since she has an early bed time coming. Both kids getting whacked, hard, like that can only mean one thing: it’s Monday.

He lost DS privileges because he punched his sister. Over the TV. Again. Yes, we’ve been down this road before. (Just for the record, he doesn’t haul off and belt her. Rather, it’s one of those shots to her shoulder or upper arm. Regardless, the Wife and I do not let him get away with it for all the obvious reasons.) He doesn’t like losing his DS privileges, but he still just can’t help himself sometimes. Like when the lass doesn’t turn off the TV the way he thinks it should be done. I mean, really, what could be more important than that?

The lass’ infraction occurred after he came home. She was hovering over him, even after he’d asked her to give him some room, and bumped him while he was coloring a picture he’d made. The bump caused him to mess up the coloring job. He got upset, but to his credit did not escalate matters. The Wife tried to explain to the lass that she has to learn to give people space. The lass then decided to raise that with some belligerence of her own, resulting in her mouth earning her an early bed time.

But the real fireworks happened at the dojo. The setup was innocent enough- the instructor was playing with the lass, including some fake punching. The Wife decided to take the opportunity to inform the instructor that this wasn’t such a good idea because the boy had punched his sister.

This breaks one of the top commandments the instructor gives his students: “Thou shalt not practice karate on your siblings.” He happens to take it very seriously. How seriously? He told the boy that he owed him 100 push-ups, that the next time it would be 200 push-ups and it would continue to go up from there.

This all happened before his class started, so the boy thought he was joking. During the class, one of the other instructors busted the boy for goofing off and made him do push-ups then as well, which didn’t set so well. He doesn’t like being called out like that. He managed to get through the rest of the class, but when the class was over he ran into the main instructor whom promptly asked him if he’d done his 100 push-ups.

The boy was shocked. He’d never believed he was supposed to perform the push-ups. But the instructor insisted, and he reluctantly set to doing them, but only made it to 25. They were a rather poor 25 at that. His face was beat red and he was on the verge of tears from embarrassment and anger. The Wife had taken him to his classes and she exchanged a knowing glance with the instructor. They let him off, but the Wife noted to him that he still owed her 75 push-ups.

When he left, he all but ran out of the dojo. Likely for fear he’d get stopped again and told to do more push-ups.

Luckily for him and the lass, Monday was basically over at that point.