Here’s the joke of the day.

“What do you get when you throw a mobile phone in a bathtub?
Answer: Speech bubbles.”

Pretty good, right? Before you scroll down and start ripping the joke apart – as is the custom on the Internet – let me add this tiny bit of information: The joke was written by my son, six years old.

To me, naturally, that’s just another piece of evidence of his brainpower and the fact that I am living in the presence of a true genius, but I know that it may just be me. (And his mother). But what I also see is a guy who’s found humor, and who’s figured out that he can make people laugh – and that it’s a pretty fantastic feeling.

I’m not sure when I started to do the same, but it’s probably a natural reaction to the fact that you’re the shortest kid in the class. That could be a bummer, unless you’re also the fastest and the funniest.

I have never had a fight in my life. And with fight, I don’t mean a heated argument, which I have been party to, but a real fist fight, or wrestling match, not even as a kid. Instead, I’ve lashed out and spat out venom when I’ve taken down the idiot that’s crossed my path.

(This is where it’s good to be the fastest guy as well).

On the trip to Bulgaria, before I met Ivo, I also became friends with a Finnish girl who stayed at the same hotel. She was probably six, and she’d lost a couple of teeth in the front. I cannot remember what it was we had an argument about, but I do remember my “quip” to her: “Yeah, whatever, Cap’n Teeth Gap”.

And she started to cry.

Which made me feel bad, so I started to patch things up.

“But you know, Cap’n Teeth Gap is a fierce Viking chief, I’d be afraid of him if I saw him.”

She wasn’t convinced. I, obviously, felt bad and got a guilty conscience because I can still see her (toothless) face in front of me, some 30 years later.

The closest I’ve got to a fight was in fifth grade when a semi-buddy of mine, a classmate who I kind of knew outside of school as well, for some reason, got on my case. I know for a fact that it was on fifth grade because thats when we started to study history, and somehow the historical battles of the textbook was re-enacted on the piles of snow outside the classroom.

I wasn’t the coolest guy in class, but I was the guy who had the ear of the coolest guy in class – like a consigliere – and we were really good friends (even though he wasn’t a hockey, but a bandy guy). The three of us – myself, the coolest guy in class, and the restelss guy – had known each other since first grade so I knew that the restless guy had some problems with concentration, and that he often found himself in the middle of a, um, dispute.

This time, the coolest guy and me, we had conquered the highest pile of snow when the restless troublemaker challenged us. He tried to climb up, we made sure he didn’t make it, and after a while I climbed down. The troublemaker jumped on me, and the whole thing ended up with him banging my head against a brick wall a couple of times.

The coolest guy saw it, chased him away, and asked me if I wanted him to “take care of him”. In other words, did I want him to kick the shit out of the troublemaker. Or, in another set of other words, did I want him to beat up the troublemaker.

The consigliere – me – thought about it for a while. The devil on his left shoulder told him to absolutely, positively, send the coolest guy on the troublemaker. The angel asked him to be the bigger person and let it be.

And the fifth-grader in the middle said, “do whatever you want”, knowing fully well that he’d go after him.

When the bell rang, and we got back to the classroom, the troublemaker was nowhere to be seen. Did anybody know where he was, the teacher asked, and nobody said anything. Had something happened, she asked, and nobody said anything.

Then the teacher set up a rescue party, consisting of 30 fifth-graders. Or, to be accurate, 29 fifth-graders.

We looked everywhere: behind the piles of snow, in the forest next to the school, behind the target boards – the only place where we allowed to throw snowballs and where one mate would always volunteer to be a moving human target -, outside the library, even the garbage dumpsters.

Without success.

Then, after a half hour or so, the coolest guy in class came walking across the schoolyard with the troublemaker. He’d found him sitting on a rock outside the church across the street. Crying.

For me, that was the end of it. I don’t now if the coolest guy faced any repercussions for the incident, but I know that the troublemaker later had an appointment with the school psychologist, and that he was recommended to go to bed earlier, and sleep more. Give his poor brain a rest, I suppose.

Today, he’s a commander of the Army, and a military strategist at NATO’s Allied Joint Force Command Headquarters.

I’m still more of a lover.