The importance of older men to boys

I was not too well recently so things will need to be a bit brief as I'm still recovering but thoughts did go back to my teens and how learning wasn't all rote learned academic stuff.

One advantage of having a fairly big family was you had a lot of people with all manner of experiences, some of which were not in your immediate family and when I was younger some of the major events of the last century such as World War Two and the changes in industialization were still fresh, keenly remembered by those who'd live through them.

Your aunts and uncles plus grand parents talked to you about what they had experienced and some schools tapped into that idea by doing "oral history" where past generations spoke to groups of boys and girls about their life and times.

I feel it grounded me much better as a boy to know of what previous generations when through and to learn something of what boyhood was from those who'd had that life and learned valuable lessons from I badly needed to learn.

Men have a lot to offer us and people should care to help to place us with them where they feel they have a valuable role to play and we gain from what they learned about life, especially as a male.

mm

The Library

Some things just stick with you.

They may be milestone events like learning to walk, your first bike and the joy of cycling around where you live under your very own steam or going to uni.

One for me was the introduction to the Library as my first school didn't have have on just tiny collection of mainly reference books often well out of date and no story books around the age five.

Finding the Doctor Suess books was a great gateway to the idea that a story could be wildly imaginative with creative use of language.

As time went on you progressed around the children's section towards more junior fiction as, as fortunate we wore to have stories read to us in school especially when we had a bigger new building with a proper library of its own.

For me my problems with the library really started when it came to the time staff expected me to use the adult section which when you have reading difficulties that affect comprehension and with developmental issues the themes of fiction didn't align with me and my life.

I really needed to be able to access the teen section and move across to the adult bit for more technical or factual works but that just wasn't made available in this district so over time my usage of it beyond the reference section or the ability to borrow music dropped off.

Maybe things will change one day.

Boyhood and Post Birthday thoughts

 

That was the week that was with some cards, choco and money which in so many ways felt more like that right down to reading the tv listings in the newspaper although I do get the Radio Times religiously for fuller listing and the radio as radio remains with me a big thing.

As a Adult Boy, that's hardly surprising really given I always listened to concerts, music shows, discussions and comedy programs and modern listings tend to ignore the many radio stations that are out there.

But this boyhood thing is worth of a bit of expression as it certainly isn't "pint sized man".

That for me gets very close to how it feels, still feels to me and why I'm not a man beyond chronological age.

I'll just play with toy cars on the carpet now....

Thoughts for a March Morning

We've entered Spring apparently although to be honest it feels colder to me than last week but school is officially back after ther half time which to be honest is where Chris really feels he belongs still although obviously you can't just turn up.

Sometimes you used to hear of people who had managed that a few years after they'd left where presumably they still look very similiar but with all the checks and that today really not gonna happen.

There's a whirl in the kitchen at the minute as I've got up, reading a few things, trying to avoid all that War stuff that's on the radio and tv news at the minute and put my clothes in the washer as while boys tended to have a reputation among girls for being "smelly", I don't like being smelly although I don't see anything wrong with getting a bit muck on me playing.

It was Mum's who tended to be all aghast when you came in with mud on socks, legs and hands but then really that was the best reason going ro put us in shorts and t shirts easier to keep us and them clean while keeping us fully occupied, well out of troubles way.

Dad was never so fussied about that, just never ever wake him up prematurely by putting the radio on when there's thunder and lightning and then hearing loud arcing from its loudspeaker.

You'd end up with burning bottom later on for it!

He's an enigma to be honest - why men seem, you know distant with emotions in bag screaming to get out but seldom do - at time riddled with contridictions and conflicted at times too which with things like a birthday around the corner you're kind of reminded of.

Actually most people say I'm more like Mum.

I don't know if he's got anything planned or even a card really, I mean last year he didn't do anything for it which is something Mum always did and he was there.

He never did anything like that on birthday morning although for all my thoughts around spanking I'd of had no issues with that kind, done with love and affection by him.