Kissy face

In my family, we kiss.
It's a perfectly normal and appropriate way to say from one person to another, "I love you, respect you and want to show my appreciation for all the wonderful things you are to me".
As children, we would all kiss our parents after each family prayer, my parents would kiss after every meal-time prayer, we children would all kiss our parents hello and goodbye. We still do this.
My Mom is the BEST kisser. She kisses everyone! I love it. Now, to be clear, she's not kissing everyone on the lips, because that's inappropriate. And the Simpson's are all about appropriate-ness. And if you buy that, I have a pig with wings I'd like to sell to you
But in all honesty, we love to kiss.

Yesterday, I realized the power of kissing.

My kindergartener was waiting for me to pick him up from school yesterday. As I drove up to the available spot, he was escorted to the car by the Vice Principal. As a side note, the Principal, the Vice and I are all well-aquainted by now:)
As I'm getting James loaded into the car, the Vice tells me, "I just wanted to let you know we had a little kissing incident today."
"What?!", I said.
 Yelled is more what I did.
"Yes", he explained, "James kissed another little boy on the lips in class today. But we had a little chat about not kissing our friends and I think things are all okay."
Imagine my surprise.

So, in the car, I asked James about it. He said that he did, indeed, kiss another little boy ("his name is Sam, mom") on the lips.
When I asked him WHY he would do such a thing, he said simply, "He was pretending to be Star Of The Week, but he's not, so I kissed him."

What do you say to that?!!!

I chuckled and clarified that he kissed this little boy (poor guy!) in self-defense. How often do you think of kissing as a tool for defense? I can just see the Karate Kid getting his a** kicked just after kissing the Cobra Kai dude for a winning point. Geez.

But would you rather have a kiss or a punch in the face?
Kissing just seems more peaceful.