Mr. Spock's Baby and Child Care

Both Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner turned 80 last week. Both actors took what could have been cheesy roles in an even cheesier show and turned them into iconic characters in a modern-day mythology that's been quoted by everyone from the cast of Saturday Night Live to the Beastie Boys.

Part of that iconic nature came from the way each character handled conflict.

So as a parent (and lifelong Star Trek fan), who do I turn to when advising my son on dealing with his own conflicts - kids in his class demonstrating distinctly Klingon-like tendencies (and not the warm and fuzzy Worf kind, either)?

How about a generous helping of Spock with a dash of ass-kicking Kirk thrown in for good measure? After all, any sort of violence that takes place in a school will instantly fall under the draconian (and unfairly applied) "zero tolerance" policies. Basically, the last kid seen striking a blow in an altercation - frequently the victim - is marked as the instigator and punished. So Spock-like calm and lack of emotion might be the ticket.

But who among the first-grade punk-ass set really buys that air of calm as a deterrent? Spock's advantage was always three-fold. A) He had the ability to emotionally remove himself from the situation and not do something stupid (read: human). B) He still had some tasty self-defense skills honed in those crazy Vulcan mating rituals and could lay some serious hurt on nearly anyone with a simple clench of the neck. C) If it all really went to hell, he had hyper-emotional Kirk there to open an industrial-sized can of intergalactic whoop-ass on all comers, alien or otherwise.

So how do we fold those together? Well, the boy, for better or worse, has a sense of peace and calm that right now seems to rival both Gandhi and MLK. He is not easily provoked, and as school protocol dictates would prefer to alert a teacher or his parents when he has been done physically wrong. This is a good thing, as I'm all for non-violence.

But as with any parent, I hate to see harm come to my kids in any form, and so I counsel an additional line of defense that will keep him (hopefully) out of the principal's office. The boy takes martial arts, and is equipped with the basic skills needed to defend himself, so I recommend defensive blocks followed by a hasty retreat. He's got a sense of humor like his old man, so I suggest humor to defuse the situation. Otherwise, just stay way from the kids who are problems. All very Spock-like.

But what boils up inside me all too often lately is the urge to rally for a cosmic-scale Capt. Kirk-ian ass kicking. I hear about the latest bit of grade-school thuggery and I imagine the boy administering a quick elbow the the face of his antagonist, then feigning ignorance of how his assailant ended up a sobbing, blubbering mess with a bloody nose. Was it possible for Kirk to pummel a Romulan into wetting his pants? Occasionally, I'd like my boy to find out.

But the thing that holds us all back as parents is - do we want kids who barrel through the universe (or neighborhood, as it were) shattering the prime directive and emerging sweaty, a little bloodied and with a drooping forelock after laying out an alien lizard creature (or pesky classmate)?

I think not. So for now I'm continuing to counsel more Spock, less Kirk, in the hope that nobody provokes him into whipping out the first-grade equivalent of the Vulcan neck pinch. I simply can't imagine having to explain that one to the principal.