This draft started in 2013!
Apparently I was reading The Great Brain to DC1 (hard to believe DC1 is heading to college only 10 years later!). It's a book set I think in the late 1800s about a Tom Sawyer-esque kid. You know, the adorable con-man type.
I never cared for the book, but my mom loved it and sent a copy to DC1. She's not as soft. #2: I loved them! But I didn't really understand the brother-dynamic.
Here, 10 years later, I'm not exactly remembering the specific fight, but there was a fight in it and afterwards the boys became friends. This was a common trope!
I think I first came across it in Robin Hood and his Merry Men -- Robin defeated someone using staffs on a bridge, IIRC (was it Friar Tuck?) But it was all over "boys" books.
Today, we don't see the trope as much, except maybe in tournament animes, where they're generally fighting in a more formal setting and come to respect each other as opponents, rather than because they hate each other.
In real life, the trope doesn't go over very well. It's much better to talk things out without someone getting beaten first. And with guns so much more prevalent, there's a very real chance combatants will die rather than bonding after an altercation. Hopefully fighting to settle schoolyard disputes is no longer blessed by school administration. Hopefully the term "tattling" (which encourages kids to keep the wrong secrets) is no longer something kids can be punished for, and hopefully bullying is being actively discouraged (note: anti-bullying was in when DC1 was in middle school, but now that DC2 is there, that seems to be out of fashion, and as a result bullying seems to have increased again).
Adults get put in jail for throwing a punch. Kids should learn non-violent ways of solving disputes younger. And they can learn them as early as age 3.
Did you grow up with fighting as a bonding activity? Did the children's literature you read feature it?
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