Kid Boxer's dad was an alcoholic and sometimes when he was liquored up enough, or liquored up in just the right way, he would bestow upon Kid Boxer his hard-won, deeply questionable wisdom. Towards the end, Kid Boxer's dad was drinking a lot, so the advice was coming fast and furious.

One thing Kid Boxer's dad liked to expound upon was the idea of going down swinging. "Fuck those pricks. No matter what, you have to go down swinging. Nobody can fault a man for trying, as long as he went down swinging." It was all pretty much like this, and delivered with a shaking finger stuck in his son's face.

Like a lot of inveterate failures, he saw a kind of virtue in failure and this is something he tried to put into his son. Kid Boxer was pretty literal-minded though, and that's why we called him Kid Boxer. By the time he was six, Kid Boxer had had the shit kicked out of him almost a dozen times by kids twice his age.

He would pick himself up and wipe the blood from his teeth, like he had doubtless seen his father do before. He would say things like, "Fuck them," because even then he had a bit of hard earned wisdom too.

His father died, falling down the stairs. Kid Boxer got quiet, and moved away.