Oops, he did it again

What is the matter with men?

How is it that I can walk the dogs without incident? How can *I* - a loud-ass American - spend whole days without confrontation or argument, yet men seem to challenge each other constantly, looking to add to their collection of manly stories?

Why can't they be trusted to walk the dogs without getting into shouting matches and fistfights?

I would probably have to count on both hands and both feet the number of confrontations my partner has had while walking the dogs at night.

It doesn't stop with him. My brother SWEARS thst other men go out to clubs looking for a fight and "pick" on him and his friends because they are big and tall(dumbasses, the lot). Of course, we hail from Boston, where the fightin' Irish have been proudly knocking each other's teeth out in tavern brawls since the Potato Famine. A Saturday night fight is practically a given when booze is involved.

Is this some kind of repressed hunting instinct? Do women have repressed nesting instincts? Is that why we have tea parties and sewing circles? (Yeah, not quite.) Is that why we always want to see the inside of our friends' houses? Nesting envy?

Anyways. Last night, dogs were walked, a bicycle came along, words were exchanged about the dogs walking loose (allowed, by the way), a brick was thrown, and the story ends with an unconscious man on the dijk. "I think I might have broken his jaw."

What do I say to this? "Bravo"? "Good job honey"? "I'm so proud"? "I can't wait to tell my friends at our next tea party"?

Helplessly, I insisted he should have at LEAST called the police to say "Hi. Someone threw a rock at my dogs, so I knocked him out. Come pick him up off the dijk." That erases some of the guilt for me. I'm just afraid that tonight there will be more bikes and more rocks. Aren't these people supposed to be Dutch?

What are we going to do with them?