5 Steps to Defeating Children While Armed Only With a Stick

A Clarification

Those of you with a talent for word-nerding will have already noted that there are two ways of interpreting this statement. Are we talking about using a stick in our possession to attack a group of children? Or are we attacking a group of children who somehow are collectively armed with a single stick?

To simplify things, we're going to do both.

How to Attack a Group of Children Who Are Collectively Armed With a Single Stick

Take the stick from them.

How to Use a Stick to Attack a Group of Children

Whether you came prepared with your own stick or simply took one from your childishly weak enemy, as discussed above, it's time to learn a bit about its properties. The stick is one of the oldest weapons known to man, the first real improvement to our military technology since the thrown turd.

The principal advantage of a stick is that it increases your effective attacking range, allowing you to menace your enemy from a distance so they can't hurt you. Additionally, sticks can be sharpened at one end, increasing the potential for damage.

That said, for the purpose of this article, I'll assume you have a regular, unsharpened stick of a good weight and length so that you can swing it one-handed. If your stick doesn't meet those parameters, ask the children to wait while you find another one, or better yet, ask them to help with your search. Children are both great at finding sticks and incredibly gullible, and when you later attack them with the very stick they found for you, it will add a layer of irony to the delicious multilayered dip this situation already is.

Now that we know the ins and outs of our chosen tool (it's a stick), let's look at our first technique.

1 Hitting the Children With the Stick

Hitting a child with a stick is incredibly easy; in fact, it's more important that you don't overthink it. Just pick a child and start swinging. Ideally, you want to avoid a situation where they can grab the stick and take it from you, which would embarrass both you and your ancestors and necessitate restarting this guide from the first step. So remember to swing hard.

If, mid-swing, you begin to feel guilty about hitting a child with a stick, that's fine. Mid-swing is really too late to do anything about it. You should have thought of that earlier, and now that you didn't, you're required to finish what you started.

2 Throwing the Stick at the Children

It sometimes happens that, after seeing you hit several of their friends with a stick, leaving your feet with each swing, children will be reluctant to approach you. This is perfectly normal. But it will make it difficult to hit more children with the stick.

However, if you have a reasonably light and maneuverable stick, as discussed, you should be able to simply throw it at them. Throw it in whatever manner feels comfortable to you, whether in a measured javelin-like motion, or just hucking it sidearm.

3 Tricking the Children into Walking into the Stick

So let's say the children have fled, and you're now not attacking children with a stick as much as you are hunting them with a stick. That's fine and perfectly legal. But now that the children have gone to ground, if you want to keep up your mindless self-defense, you're going to need to use your stick as a booby trap. Here's one way:

If you leave that there long enough, eventually a child will walk into it, because children are incredibly clumsy. Children love sticks and will invariably seek them out, so this trap is essentially self-baiting. Still, you can augment that bait if you want slightly faster results:

Alternately, if the stick you're using is a bit bigger and you have some rope, you can try something like this:

Or you could just plant your stick in the ground and conceal yourself in nearby foliage or something else ...

... leaping out to grab the nearest child when they stroll by. From this position, you can mock them for their gullibility, or consider an even more advanced technique, such as ...

4 Forcing the Children to Hit Themselves With the Stick

Once you've caught and are sitting on one of your tiny attackers, you place yourself in what is essentially a "citizen's arrest" type situation. You're now somewhat responsible for their safety, which means that hitting them with a stick is no longer acceptable. That means you will have to make the child hit himself with the stick, which is the most moral thing you can do in this situation.

5 Psychological Warfare

Eventually it will come to pass that all of your attackers will escape, and you will no longer be able to actively defend yourself. But don't put your stick away yet! Because the government requires that children go to school, you have a very good idea where to find them on the next weekday and will be able to lie there in ambush. The courts call this Terror Stick Stalking Against a Minor, and it's your constitutional right.

So, loiter outside the schoolyard, in full view of the classroom windows, pounding your stick into your hand. During recess, walk slowly back and forth by the playground, running your stick over the chain-link fence. At lunchtime, obliterate a pumpkin in the school's parking lot.

The children will learn not to trifle with you ever again, and on the playground they will soon compose songs celebrating your power and dominion.

And then you're done. Congratulations. You have successfully defended yourself.

Chris Bucholz is a Cracked columnist and isn't allowed within 500 feet of a lot of things. Join him on Facebook or Twitter to receive the latest in child care tips.