The border incursions begin at dawn and continue unabated throughout the day. First an advance scout is sent, followed by a larger advance party; if these troops are successful the entire force will proceed, although seldom does it ever get that far. Usually the other side–alerted, no doubt, by the sounds of demonic giggling–strikes back at the very first sign of a border breach. Sometimes they even strike before. That’s where I come in.
“Aiii!,” comes the blood-curdling scream, followed shortly thereafter by a sobbing Clyde. “Clementine kicked (hit/pushed/bit/punched/impaled/eviscerated) me.” Right on cue Clementine comes sliding into the kitchen, as indignant as an NBA player who has just been called for blocking.
“He was in my room!”
“I was not. I was next to it.”
I don’t have to be Columbo to figure this one out: it’s obvious that Clyde was playing one of his favorite (and most dangerous) games–sister-baiting–and that, like the matador who was a little too slow with the cape, he got gored. From the way he is favoring his right foot it is also obvious that he was playing the Hokey-Pokey version of this game, also known as “you put your right foot in (your sister’s room)/you take your right foot out/you put your right foot in/ Aiii!”
What’s not so obvious is at what point the retaliatory kick took place, because while repelling invaders is acceptable, chasing them back across the border into their own lands to administer justice is not. Unfortunately, the UN observers I had on hand to monitor occurrences such as these were called back to duty in the Kashmir (“call us when one of them gets some nukes,” they said as they left), and so it is up to me to assign guilt in this particular skirmish. (Or, since neither party really qualifies as “innocent,” to assign percentages of guilt. Sort of like the way an insurance company determines the percentage of fault in a car accident.)
It would seem logical at first to assign the majority of the blame to Clyde; after all, it was his original transgression that started the whole incident. There are, however, two problems with this division. The first is that, in many ways, living in a room next door to Clementine is a lot like living next to the devil: it would take a bigger man than Clyde to resist the taunting that comes floating down through his transom like a voice in the wilderness, “You’re stupid…you’re stupid…you’re stuuuupid.” And the second is that the whole reason it is possible for Clyde to stick so much as one toe into Clementine’s room is that her door no longer shuts properly–a direct result of several years of vigorous slamming on her part.
Still, somehow the punishment must be divvied up and assigned, otherwise the fighting will continue to escalate until something (most likely belonging to me) gets broken. The problem, however, still lies with my not being able to determine whether this was a peremptory strike on Clementine’s part, or a simple case of deportation. (If defenestrate means “to throw someone out of a window” then obviously deportate must mean “to throw someone out of a door.”)
At times like these I can see the advantage of having a CCTV system in place–sort of a tattlecam, as it were. With these marvels of modern technology at my fingertips I could securely record every single transgression, and administer justice accordingly. Of course, that would also mean that I would have to respond to every single transgression, and–given the current level of hostilities–this could easily create a backlog of unheard cases stacking up for decades. Which leaves me with the same old punishment routine that parents have been using for centuries: everybody goes to their rooms. Including, sometimes, the parents. Works for me.