Originally posted by bsbray11

Maybe it's just where you're from then. I know people who got into fights at my high school and then ended up being best friends, and that's in the late 1990s.

When I was in elementary school, me and one of my best buddies got into a fight, because he kept jumping onto my back, so I eventually slung him over it and we got into a fist fight. The teachers made us apologize to each other and immediately after that we were best of friends again. No expulsion or being sent to the office or anything.

I got into a lot of fights with friends in elementary school, and was never punished for it beyond after-school detention. And, of course, after detention we were friends again, walking home from school and getting into further trouble. Partners in crime, you might say.

The most vicious one I ever got into was with someone I wasn't friends with. We both got suspended for a week--he with a concussion, me with a couple fractured bones in my hand and a few stitches in my lip (yeah, it was nasty)--and then were best friends until his dad got redeployed to Korea. No one called the police, though... and this was on school grounds during a basketball game in the middle of the day.

It just amazes me, not only that the system has changed so much in so little time, but how parents continue to put their kids into such authoritarian systems. But that's for another thread...

Edit: And kudos to the Bhagavad Gita. I highly recommend it.