Let's get one thing straight before I even begin this post. Namely, that I would never condone beating up a 12-year old boy. Unless, of course, you were a 12-year old yourself, and the recipient 12-year old had initiated the whole thing (i.e. had "really been asking for it"), leaving you no course of action save a one-time ass-kicking. Furthermore, and equally important, I'd like to state on the record that this is a subject that I probably haven't thought about since the period between roughly the spring of '83 through the fall of '87. However, a friend sent me an article from McSweeney's the other day that got the old juices flowing on the subject.
The article, titled "A Realistic Assessment of How Many 12-Year Olds I Could Beat Up Before They Overtook Me", is a deeply insightful piece on this matter. I think it was particularly striking to me, because I was recently arguing with some friends of mine about how many yards I could rack up in a season of Pop Warner football. Needless to say, my side of the argument was that, at 6'-2" 200lbs and with 30 years of wisdom under my belt, I could post near-record numbers, as long as I remembered to stretch. The other side of the argument held that Pop Warner is more legit than I think, and that those little monsters would ding me up pretty badly over the first two games, slowing me down enough for one of them to lay me out in game 3, thereby ending my chance at the record book. A third side held that in the thrill of the competition I would, in fact, forget to stretch, and that my season would come to a screeching halt in game one, courtesy of a pulled hammy.
Now, my run at the Pop Warner record book aside, I have to admit that I think the author of that article is underestimating the average 12-year old in 2005. These are not the same 12-year olds from our childhood. There is, in my estimation, a sort of inflation that occurs in all matters of childhood development. On the mental/maturity side, I can say with absolute certainty that the 12-year olds I occasionally ride on the subway with in the morning on my commute to work talk about things that I didn't even know existed until I was at least 28 or 29. And they talk about these things really loudly, so I think that their vocal cords might also be more mature than mine were at that age. Also, kids seem to be different physically these days as well. There's supposedly a 14-year old kid playing for the DC United. How the hell is that possible?
Given these factors, and two other points that I think the author of that article failed to take into account - namely that (i) men always seem to overestimate their abilities in these types of discussions, and (ii) there's a good chance that an author for McSweeney's was never quite an All-American athlete - I think that we as readers have to downwardly revise his estimates, and assume that 4 - 5 12-year olds is probably more realistic.
I, on the other hand, am pretty sure that I could take 7....as long as I remember to stretch.
* PS - I talked to Nina about this last night and she seemed to think that under normal circumstances she could probably take one, possibly two 12-year old girls. However, she hurt her back this past weekend dancing with a 7-year old, so I have to assume her analysis is iffy.
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