Tag Archives: Father’s Day

Father’s Day

It’s telling, I think, that a recent Rasmussen poll finds fully a third of Americans either denying that fatherhood is important or being unsure if it is. It’s a hard role, and especially hard when dealing with a boy. The irony of that is that men are supposed to want sons. Yet daughters generally are easier for a father to deal with. But the whole thing about what people are supposed to want is a media creation and I, of all people, ought to know how phony media creations/constructs are. Designed entirely to sell. No more.

Happy Father’s Day

I got the wish on the phone from Mr. B. who was preparing for a bath, after a hard day of picnicing, volleyball and chasing fireflies at his mother’s family reunion. Of course I had my day a week early, so I’ve had plenty of time to check out this pdf of the 1913 book "Training the Boy." (The author, William Arch McKeever, wrote "Training The Girl," in 1919) He encourages Boy Scout membership, and we’ve begun that with Cub Scouts. One piece of advice I can’t follow, however, is the recommendation that, if at all possible, you must be sure to get him a pony. Sorry, I’m not into horses. How about a sloop?

Father’s Day

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.