Reasoning or Punching In the Face? Tough Call

My little boy is almost eleven years old. I guess that makes him not quite so little anymore. I don't care though, he's still my baby. He is all boy though. To such a degree that if I wasn't so confident in his ability to share his thoughts and feelings with me, but especially with Marc, I would really worry. Thank God he's got Marc as a dad. I have friends who won't tell their husbands certain things their children do or say in fear that the dad will get mad. Chase and his friends tell Marc a lot. Sometimes more than he probably wants to know.

I was away this weekend so I was hearing the play by play of the goings on's back in Pennsylvania, via txt from three different sources. So I had already heard the edited down version of, "the hat incident," before I got home and Chase told me first hand.

"So what went on this weekend?" I asked him with a little squint to my eyes so he would know what I meant.
"Do you know already?" he asked.
"I do, but I want to hear you tell me exactly what happened," I said.
"We were at the ice skating rink and some 8th graders (Chase and his friends in 5th) stole Jake's hat," he said.
"Yes, continue," I said.
"Well, they wouldn't give it back and we were racing around the rink trying to get it. The big kid pushed Jake down. He got back up and raced after him. He hip checked the older kid. That kid grabbed Jake and pushed him up against the side with his forearm up by his neck (this was demonstrated to me, Chase didn't say forearm). So I went like this... " Chase showed me how he punched the kid in the face.
Oh dear...
God.
Boys.
"What happened then?" I asked
"We just skated off with Jake's hat," he said.

Now see, as the mom of the fifth grader it seems a slippery slope as to how to feel about that. I don't like hitting. I don't think it solves anything. But I'm not a fifth grade boy defending his friend against an 8th grader. I actually love the fact that he stood up for his friend. That part makes me so happy that I can overlook how it went down. I don't know how far reasoning would go at the ice skating rink with a bunch of nasty 8th graders. I know Mike Brady would have wanted to reason with him. Mike also understood when reasoning didn't work anymore.  And everyone knows that Mike Brady was a very thoughful man.

Marc was proud of him. I try to leave the boy stuff to him. That's his department. I'll be the one to wrap my little tough boy up in my arms and kiss his freshly cut hair and tell him he's sweet little turtle. He seems happy with both.

I think the moral of the story is that Chase is a good friend. I'm just going to leave it at that.