I was working upstairs this morning when I heard the kids go from arguing to yelling to “time for Daddy to interfere.”

As always, my arrival cued the start of “this is what he did”s, with each of them telling what horrible thing his brother did. The accusations spiraled back in time, until we got to this one, from my oldest son:

“He locked me out of the house!”

His younger brother threw up his hands. “It was just a joke!”

The two looked at me, waiting for judgement. We had apparently reached that most elusive of all things: the reason a fight started. Unfortunately, my brain was too slow to come up with anything profound.

“Hm,” I said to my youngest. “I’m good with that being a joke, but that means you have to laugh it off the next time he locks you out of the house.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his older brother start to smile.

“Wait!” my wife interrupted. “That is not a joke. We do NOT joke by locking people out of the house.”

Yeah. That’s probably a better answer.