If you’ve wasted any time on Twitter this week, you’ve no doubt witnessed the heated debate that’s currently roiling The Discourse: Could 100 unarmed men defeat a single adult male gorilla in hand-to-hand combat?

As it happens, I think they could, and easily. Yes, there would be casualties. But, in short, the gorilla, in his deadly exertions, would wear himself out. Gorillas are all strength and mass and no cardio. My view is that as few as 20 unarmed human males, properly coordinating their actions, could overpower the gorilla. (Again, there would be casualties.)

But more interestingly — at least to my mind — is a separate set of questions, questions that have no doubt occurred to any man who is a father.

On the evening of Good Friday (it was a strange day), I asked my buddy, Jake — a large man who is an Iraq War veteran, a jujitsu aficionado, and the father of four boys under eight — whether he thought he could defend himself against his boys and mine (three under age seven).

I wasn’t surprised to find that my friend thought that, at full go, he could defeat the Seven Against Jake — and I thought the same. There would be casualties, of course. But he’d win.

Then, upping the stakes, I asked if he thought he could fend off their attacks if the boys were armed with razor-sharp samurai swords and he was armed only with a Louisville slugger.

Jake thought the boys would get him. They’d bring him down. “Someone is going to find flesh with the pointy end of a sword,” he predicted. “I’d bleed out, even if I got them all.”

I thought — and I still think — that I could handle the seven little gremlins. Seven boys with swords versus me with a baseball bat? Oh, sure. But what about a dozen? Or two dozen?

Well — in that case, I think I’d be in the same spot as the gorilla: overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

And, to answer your question, no, our wives do not understand us.