Where have they gone? Is the cut of a John Wayne just a memory, or does such a man actually exist in today's feel-good-at-all-costs world?
What are we doing to our boys that makes them such wimps? I'm around kids all day long and I have girls with more intestinal fortitude than some of my boys. It's scary. Our society is turning boys into whiney, little wonders. It makes me worry about what our country will look like in 20 years when these "young men" grow up, if they grow up.
I do teach some wonderful kids and many I'd be proud to raise, but when you encounter such utter frailty in boys on a regular basis it begs you to wonder why.
My own theory is that today's parents are the ones that got sand kicked in their faces when they were in elementary school. These guys were raised in a world that is increasingly self-serving; therefore, they spend more time thinking about themselves than others and have never said no to their children. This breed of parent has sheltered their boys to the point where Cowboys and Indians is not something you play, but just a bunch of characters in a history book.
As a child, I played games like War, Cops and Robbers, Cowboys and Indians, and, God forbid, Dodge Ball. We kept score and there were winners and losers. If anyone got knocked down, we didn't cry, we didn't run to our counselor, we just dusted ourselves off and got back into game.
Arguments were settled after school, with our fists, and they didn't last long. We soon forgot the genesis of the dispute and were quickly friends again. We played with "action figures," not cell phones. A scrape was considered a badge of honor, not a reason to escape P.E.
Oh, and we played baseball all summer long, all day long. We learned to hit a curveball by actually swinging at a "real" ball, not one on an X-Box. Only the best nine, the best 11, or the best five were allowed into the game. If you wanted to play you had to work to win your position. It wasn't given to you because of a rule made by parent that didn't get to play, like in today's ultra-sophisticated metro-world.
In short, we were tough and scrappy, even the least of us, which sometimes I was. My mom didn't bail me out of every rough situation I got myself into. She let me learn from my mistakes, which were many. I got burned, I bled, but I didn't quit.
Where have the future real men gone? Thanks to an America that's afraid of its own shadow our boys can't use their finger as a gun. They can't run around shouting "bang-bang" in school or else it'll be locked down and CNN will carry the story.
I'm a parent that has raised his girls to be tough and fend for themselves because they are entering a world that doesn't care about their lame excuses. I'm not Mr. Perfect, but I pray for a real man for each of my girls to marry. Not some wimp that will hide under the bed at every spooky noise or run home to mommy when things don't work out. I want a real man as my son-in-law and the father of my grandchildren.
If you're reading this and you have a son, let him experience the fun of sliding into a base and getting a strawberry. Let that sucker sting and don't automatically try to make it all better. Let your son dream he's the cop that takes down the bad guy. Raise your son to embrace his fears instead of running from them and to know that anger is a normal part of being a man when used for the right purpose.
We need our young boys to grow into strong young men and not cry every time things don't go their way.
Okay Adrienne, there's my rant for the day. I confess, I can't stand cry-babies, whether they are middle schoolers or adults. Grow up, do your job, and quit whining. God didn't make us to be sissies. He made me to be a man and to act like one.
That's my confession...what's yours?
TFR
1 comment:
I know what you mean, playing tackle football in the street would realy seperate the wimps from the real boys in our neighborhood! In my house a normal consequence at 12 years old was to be splitting wood for the winter, we had rounds of pine that were 24-30" thick and about 2' tall, try busting those apart with a splitting mall or a wedge and sledgehammer. We spent a lot of time in the mountains and were given a lot of freedom to go explore, my parents taught us early the art of saving your butt, you had to know where camp was and where your roads were to be able to have fun! There was nothing like playing cowboys and indians with homemade bows and arrows while in the mountains, oh yeah-can you guess which one I was---definitely an indian! (the Cowboys stink!) When you got hurt, you had to suck it up and keep going, if it didn't require stitches it didn't count as being hurt (I required a lot of stitches! Near as I can recall, over 50 at different times in my head alone) But I also grew up helping my Dad work on cars in the garage and knew how to change the oil and even install a new clutch on the jeep by the time I could drive. It's the men who fail to make boys into men, I am glad my parents raised me the way they did. I leave tomorrow to go hunting with my Dad, and yes, I will have to gut his deer for him...just another way to toughen me up he says!
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