Tag Archives: Cowboy Gene

Mine came early, last Sunday, in fact, because Mr. Boy and mom flew off to Maryland the other day for a family reunion this weekend. I didn’t go essentially because I don’t like to travel and I had other things to do, such as finish preparing the sloop for summer sailing. I don’t get ties, fortunately, because I don’t wear them often. Instead I got a book store gift card, a book analysing the Harry Potter series, which Mr. B. and I have been reading, and a new pair of swimming trunks. It seems most appropriate, however, to prepare to spend the actual day renewing my ideas of how to raise a son, training him in the manly virtues while trying to temper them to keep him from being booted out of school for misbehavior. Girls, his mother often says, cooperate, and we see evidence of that all the time. Boys, on the other hand, compete. They have the Cowboy Gene, as Tony Woodlief puts it, and require a different touch.