Threats, real and imagined

One of the things that makes childhood such an exciting time of life is that the Big People - adults - wield real physical power over us.

When you’re a kid, you take that kind of thing seriously.

In our house, nothing brought about Instant Obedience quite as effectively as the classic Daddy Threat: “I’m gonna get out the belt!” Never mind that, in all the years I lived under the same roof with my father, not once did he ever actually get out the belt. It was the mere suggestion that such a powerful piece of weaponry would - could - be brought into play. My brother - the other Elisson - and I would not have snapped to attention any faster had Dad threatened to get out his .44 Magnum. (Which would have been a neat trick, since he has never owned a gun in his life.)

When a less serious threat was called for, other weapons - more versatile weapons - in the Parental Arsenal would be trotted out.

“Keep it up, and I’m gonna give you a frask im pisk!”

Ah, the old Frask im Pisk. That’s a smack in the mouth, for the 0.0002% of y’all that may be Yiddish-impaired: a serious sanction reserved only for the most egregious infractions. Fortunately for me and my brother, our folks were not big users of the frask im pisk. Strong medicine, that.

“I’m gonna give you a potch in tuches!”

That’s a smack on the ass - a very versatile threat, for it could be issued in perfect seriousness...or it could be meant completely in jest. Compare and contrast the potch in tuches with “I’m gonna kick yer ass!” The former is almost deceptively playful, while the latter is an unalloyed warning. When we were threatened with a potch in tuches, we could never really be sure whether it was a real threat, a threat made in jest, or mere posturing. One thing’s for sure: nobody was in a hurry to find out.

The best threat, though, came from my Uncle Gerry, of blessed memory.

Back on our Snot-Nose Days, when we would horse around to the point of becoming annoying, Uncle Gerry would warn us: “I’m gonna give you a funge in the knibber!”

To this day, nobody has ever, to my knowledge, figured out what a funge was, nor what part of the anatomy the knibber represented. But when we were little, nobody wanted to find out, all too late, that a funge was “an ashcan-sized exit wound, similar to that left by a hollow-point projectile,” and that the knibber was another word for “skull.”

We all have Parental Threats that we remember fondly...or maybe not so fondly. But Parental Threats are threats whose overarching purpose is to enforce discipline, a necessary component of growing up to be a civilized human being. Parents who avoid disciplining their children end up with children who behave as though they were raised by wolves…and so a Parental Threat is, in its own way, an expression of love.

There’s a big difference between a Parental Threat and a Real-Life Threat, as anyone living in Israel is well aware. Those Real-Life Threats are not intended to make us better human beings. They are intended to make us dead human beings.

Real-Life Threats, like Parental Threats, are issued with varying levels of seriousness of both intent and risk of harm. They might range from “I’m gonna punch you inna nose” (the Schoolyard Bully) or “We’re gonna wipe you off the map” (Mahmoud Ahminadinnerjacket). But in the case of a Parental Threat, failure to carry out the threat is not necessarily a sign of ill-resolve or of weakness. The parent is always physically capable of harming the child, even if he or she would never think to do so.

Real-Life Threats are different. If a threat is not outright bluster - which in many cases it is - a Real-Life Threat is a true threat, either to life, liberty, or economic well-being. Real-Life Threats cannot be ignored.

What can you do about Real-Life Threats?

You can ignore them, and hope the threatener goes away. This works only if the threat is empty bluster, with nothing to back it up.  But if they’re threats made with serious intent, you ignore them only at grave risk.

You can wait until the threatener makes good on his promise. By then, it is generally too late to avoid some damage or (G-d forbid) loss of life.  But once the provocative gauntlet has been tossed, immediate, forceful action is called for.  Anything less, and more threats will follow.  It’s one of the things they teach you in Negotiating 101.

You can act preemptively against a credible threat of serious harm. This approach has its risks, however, and leaves the threatener the option of crying, “I was only kidding!”  The whole issue of whether preemptive action is ever justified is its own tightly packed can of worms, however, and it is best opened in a different post.

But regardless, the one thing that will remove a threat - once action is decided upon - is to remove the threatener, or pound him into submission such that no new threat can even be contemplated.  Sadly, this is what Olmert’s foray into Lebanon failed to achieve...and why, despite my best hopes, our people’s resolve is likely to be tested again by those enemies who pose a Real-Life Threat.