My favorite story

Last night I was asked to fill in for the HS guy here at Inner City Impact. It wasn’t hard to come up with a quick talk that related to coming to Christ. I got to tell one of my favorite stories ever, "Getting in a fight with Steve Moor." It’s a great story about doing something wrong, getting out of trouble, and restoring a relationship.

I’ve told the story so many times that about 2 years ago I e-mailed Steve’s dad and asked him about his recollections of that day. Turns out, he thought about it enough to write this column for the South Bend Tribune back in September 2004.

MOOR OR LESS
By BILL MOOR
Tribune Columnist

I was
driving my third-grade daughter and first-grade son home from school
that snowy afternoon when I caught my fourth-grade son in midshove.

He and his buddy, Adam — or former buddy — were having a bit of an altercation right there in Leeper Park.

A push here. A swing there.

With both of them in their snow gear, they didn’t look as if they were doing much damage, but I pulled over anyway.

I
grabbed both of them by the arms and yelled at them to knock it off. I
don’t think I said anything noteworthy, but the froth from my mouth
apparently got their attention.
I’m sure I was the last person they expected to land right in the middle of their little feud.
They
both look embarrassed. They both walked home — heads down. As the
years passed, they went their own ways, no longer close buddies but not
adversaries, either.

When I drive by Leeper Park, I occasionally
remember that little scene — just one of those hundreds of mental
snapshots I keep from my kids’ formative years.

Adam McLane, my son Steve’s buddy back then, remembers it, too. But what he remembers most was the following day — a Saturday afternoon.

I took Steve and Adam to the movie "Rocky IV."

You
know the movie. It’s when Rocky outboxes the Soviet wunderkind and then
says to the Russian crowd: "If youz can change and I can change, then
wez all can change."
An end to the Cold War almost immediately.

I
don’t think that the theme — spoken so eloquently by the Rockster —
was why I took them to see that movie. Quite frankly, I didn’t even
remember seeing it with them until Adam recently e-mailed me.

He is
now an associate pastor of student ministries at a Baptist church in
Romeo, Mich., with a wife and two children. He says he retells that
little episode often to his church groups.

"That simple little lesson taught me an awful lot about forgiveness and grace and life."
Maybe
that’s what I wanted out of getting them together after their tiff. Or,
who knows, maybe I just wanted to show them how punchy a person could
get if he went through life banging ribs and butting heads like Rocky.

Adam
did want to know if I could explain what was going through my mind back
then and if I thought Steve also learned a lesson that day.

I wasn’t
sure how to respond. I did tell him that it was probably my way of
showing that I believed in both of them — that I wasn’t taking sides
— and that if they quarreled again, they would be letting me down as
well as themselves.

I’m sure I also didn’t want them to dwell on their bad blood — that the sooner people make up, the quicker feelings heal.

After the movie, I didn’t know if it helped or not. Just a few days ago, Adam told me it did.
So
I called my son, Steve, and asked if he remembered the episode. He said
that every time he sees a Rocky movie, he does. And even if he didn’t
say so back then, he says he did learn some lesson, too.

Hmmm.

When
I think back to those parenting days, I tend to remember the mistakes I
made — of being too strict … or being too pushy … or being too
flippant.

I think we all do that as parents.

We measure ourselves against Ward Cleaver of "Leave it to Beaver" or Jim Anderson of
"Father Knows Best," and we come up wanting.

It is easy for us to remember the times when we think we could have done better as parents.

But then we occasionally are reminded that maybe we did a few things right, too. Steve even mentions now that I wasn’t such a bad guy back then after all.

I told him if he continued to get mushy like that, I’d send Adam down to finish their fight.