Hezbollah attacks an Israeli patrol and kidnaps two soldiers, Israel invades Lebanon, starts bombing infrastructure and continues bombing in Gaza.  Looks to me like somebody is going to get blood on the carpet.  If I were a betting man, I know where I would put my money.

Now, as just another dumb Okie, I can understand the Palestinians being upset about losing their land – in 1948.  The funny thing is, even an Okie understands that after almost 60 years of butt whooping, your game plan is not working.  I really think a normal person would stop after awhile and ask if this is really the best course of action. 

Who knows, maybe some of these guys attended our business schools.  Looks to me like they are trying to beat a negative margin with volume.  It must be like Vegas.  Everybody I know never loses money there.  They always make a couple of bucks or “cover their trip.”  Yet, Vegas still manages to pay the electric bill and even build a few more luxury resorts.   Each generation seems intent on feeding the machine and accepting negative returns on their investment.

Shortly after my oldest came of age, we found ourselves in Vegas with the rest of the family.  Leaving Momma and the younger siblings behind, I took my oldest to the floor to teach him the manly game of craps.  It worked out just as I expected.  We were down about 50 bucks before he knew what was happening.  That was when he had a teachable moment.  Everything in him said we should stay at the table and win it back.  I, on the other hand thought it better to walk away, regroup and start betting against the shooter.  That is very bad table etiquette, but who cares when you are talking money.  We recovered our loses and pocketed a few bucks in return.  When we cashed in our chips, I kept one and handed it to him for good luck.  He is on the other side of the world now, but I hope he still has it with him.  As a reminder of when to walk away.

After so many years of rolling snake eyes, some father needs to pull his sons aside and tell them that hate never wins the big pots.  It clouds your reason, and blinds you to the realities of your situation.  Anger is an easy emotion to feed but it never pays big dividends. 

Unfortunately, this will not happen and there will not be peace in Israel.  Mom would watch the news tonight with her coke and sigh deeply.  She was a realist and would know that tonight, there is going to be blood on the carpet.  

Mom always had her priorities right.  Cuts heal, broken noses mend, skin abrasions will mostly scab over, but blood on the carpet is an incredibly tricky thing to make right.

Mom was having some friends over for coffee one early summer day so my older brother and I were sent outside to play.  Having coffee must be a tradition of the ancient past.  The women of that time period did not “go out” for coffee, they “came over” for coffee.  They would make their own and talk about women stuff that both bored and terrified my brother and myself.  Friendships were born through these coffees that would carry these women through family breakups, rebellious children, crisis of faith and ultimately, the loss of a child.  Good friendships – built over coffee.

This held no interest for my brother and me, so we headed outside to see what trouble we could locate.  It didn’t take long.  There were always a few dirt clods laying around for young boys to find.  The problem with two siblings and dirt clods is that one of them usually holds a physical advantage over the other.  He can throw harder and farther, giving him a decisive tactical advantage.  Now the smaller, weaker sibling has a few options, none of which are attractive.  He can try to sneak in closer, thus neutralizing the distance advantage but he will lose a painful war of attrition as he trades hits with a stronger opponent.  Another option is to retreat the field of battle.  Smart?  Yes, but not considered very brave.  In the Battle of the Backyard, getting beat is not nearly as traumatic as losing your honor.  Young bodies will typically heal fairly fast, but you can never fully retrieve lost honor, for the memory of the losing stays attached to your soul long after logic and circumstances have reconciled the cowardice within your mind.

There is a third option to be deployed when survival and honor are in conflict.  You can always escalate to rocks.  For a brief moment in time, the field is level, superior weapons balance against superior skills.  For the smaller, weaker party to the conflict, victory whispers softly in his ear that all things are possible, and that he may still yet survive victorious.   The illusion is short lived.  For the older, larger member of the Family Pack must respond with overwhelming force, otherwise his position is forever in peril and the natural order of the universe will be eternally off center until one foe completely crushes the other.  It is the rule of the playground - harsh, cold and unforgiving.  Win big or forever be defending your shrinking Kingdom.

And thus, my brother was led to pick up a brick and hurl it at my position.  I dodged it, almost.  The gash on my head was relatively small, at most an inch and a half.  Yet the blood flowed freely as head wounds do.  I ran for the house with my brother following close at hand, knowing that if this required a trip to the doctor, his indiscretion could not be overlooked.  I came through the back door, blood flowing freely down my face, screaming like I had lost an important appendage and interrupted Mom’s coffee.  Mom readily grasped the nuance of the situation and with the voice of an angry god, immediately replaced my fear of injury with my fear of parental authority by uttering the words that became a part of our family lore, “don’t bleed on the carpet, I will be outside to patch you up in a minute”.  Mom fixed me up with the purple medicine the vet had given her to use on the horses and us boys whenever someone got cut.  Order was restored to the house and Mom went back to her coffee to laugh about the event with her friends.

Mom kept her cool during the whole ordeal and that had an interesting, calming influence on me.  She never asked what happened, she just intrinsically knew that her two boys had squared off again and blood was spilt.  But the carpet was still clean, I would heal and my brother and I would ultimately become close friends.