Month: February 2021

Stuck in the Past…

The wife and I have gone to a couple of high school basketball games recently. Our kids aren’t exactly overly athletic, but our youngest plays a mean trap set in the pep band. “Screw sports, we’re here for the band”… yes, we are those parents. Anywho, being in a high school gymnasium filled with high school kids and obnoxious parents (we sit on the visiting team side, because the view of the band is better, and not many of those parents listen to the whole pre-recorded message about not yelling at the officials and using good sportsmanship and whatnot… because they are assholes living vicariously through their children… did I mention my kid is an awesome drummer… there’s not a lot of yelling at officials and calling other children horrible things when you’re living vicariously through a band kid) made me realize that I hated high school.

I don’t remember always hating high school. In fact, I remember, at certain points as an adult, wishing that I could go back to high school and deal with the lesser stresses of that time. There was a time in my life where I thought that my years in high school were the best years of my life (college SUCKED) and that life was all downhill from there. But being in a gym filled with high school kids and watching how they interact and stuff, I have tried searching my memory banks for positive experiences that happened before I entered the real world. I am drawing an absolute blank. I know I had to have laughed and enjoyed myself in high school… but I can’t think of any specific times that I really had fun. Fully positive experiences, not touched by shades of gray, had to exist, but I can’t remember them. I can’t remember a single time of joy.

I remember people, and I remember liking those people. I can remember doing thing with those people, and I’m pretty sure that fun was had, but I can’t remember the specifics of the fun. There always seems to be darkness associated with every event I can remember; maybe that’s just high school?

I think I remember almost every negative experience that I lived through in high school. School dances ended nightmarishly. Losing my starting middle-linebacker spot on the football team my senior year because I was too small is something that shaped my future drastically. Being teased a lot my freshman year because I had transferred from a small, rural school to the “big city” (population about 3000) for high school and being thought of as a geeky, outsider loser set some precedents that have followed me through life. I started trying to be extremely nice to everyone because I wanted everyone to like me, and I didn’t think liking me was possible if I wasn’t super nice. I focused on being “funny”, and that somewhat seemed to work, but humor turns as bitter as it’s owner and I have probably hurt some feelings with my, at times, deeply sarcastic humor. I remember being depressed, a lot, and kind of hating myself. These few things I’ve mentioned are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I remember not having any confidence in anything about myself. So, why can I remember vividly the negative, but I can’t find any tiny nuggets of the positive that must have been. It’s driving me nuts how my memory seems so selective. I want to remember the good stuff; maybe that would help overshadow the bad.

I have never gone to any of my high school class reunions, and there have been three (one every ten years since we graduated). I always kind of think about it, but the negative thoughts just overwhelm any desire I have to be back around people and things from that time in my life (even though I know some of those people are really good people). A former female classmate, before the most recent reunion, told me I needed to go because some my female classmates were interested in meeting my wife. Apparently, there was a group of females in my class who thought I was gay, and they couldn’t believe that I had actually married a woman. Because I didn’t date or have girlfriends or seem to express any interest in the opposite sex, I apparently came off as gay. So, it appears that having absolutely no self-confidence in one’s desirability, or in having anything to offer to those he is attracted to, puts off a very gay vibe. Nothing against those who are gay, but that is definitely not the vibe I was gunning for in high school. Maybe I would have had a more positive experience in high school if I were gay, but I kind of doubt that being a gay teenager in the late 80’s in small-town Montana would have been a joyride. Plus, dudes are just disgusting and gross… I could never be attracted to that.

So, now I have all of my negative memories plus I have the confidence-draining knowledge that a segment of my female peers thought I was gay. Not surprisingly, as a straight dude who was terrified of the opposite sex through my youth and young-adult life, this knowledge doesn’t make me feel any better about my past.

Every now and then, I have a glimmer of a positive memory, but then, it’s like, “Oh, I remember how that ended… that wasn’t good.” My high school memories are just clusters of stuff not ending well. I feel like being able to recover some of the positive memories might help to push the negative memories (that constantly interrupt my thoughts) out of my way. Maybe I need to find my old high school yearbooks and look through the writings in those… but I’m going to guess that they will be filled with old buddies jokingly calling me names and making fun of me before letting me know that we were going to have the “BEST SENIOR YEAR EVER!”. Or maybe there will be some handwritten gems from female classmates alluding to a homosexual future that I didn’t understand or even know that others were expecting from me?

Yeah, maybe I should just let sleeping yearbooks lie. Besides, college was way worse…

How to Become a Man…

I’m not a man. I’m a human male, but I am not now, nor have I ever considered myself to be, a man. Not being a man really used to bother me, but the older I get, the less it matters to me. Of course, I’m lying when I write that it matters less to me, but lying to ourselves about things we realize we are getting too old to change is part of getting old.

Oxford Languages defines a man as: “an adult male human being.” Yeah, that’s almost my definition of what I am too, but Oxford Languages and I have different definitions of what it takes to be a man. I think the definition of “manhood” maybe has something to do with it. Oxford Languages defines “manhood” as: “the state or period of being a man rather than a child.” Ahh… now I see it. I never truly passed on from childhood, so I don’t consider myself to be a man.

In order to become a man, in my opinion, you have to physically do something to pass from childhood to manhood. The journey is filled with the passing of a ritual or ritual-like way of life that converts a boy into a man. By passing through this ritual, the confidence necessary to hold the title of man can be achieved. There are many ways to achieve the status of “man”… I just never found a way to (or lacked a strong desire to) accomplish any of them.

Some guys are able to pass into manhood by serving in the military. In the military, some guys are broken down from their positions as children and then built back up into men. Other guys are just screwed up for life by joining the military; it messes up who they were and creates someone new that isn’t necessarily a man but is nothing like the person they were before (often not for the better).

My only attempt at the military was applying to get into either the Army or Navy ROTC program at the college I ended up attending (per my dad’s strong suggestion). I interviewed for both and was accepted by neither. They didn’t see me as military material, and so neither did I; that ended any interest I had in anything military.

Some boys are able to earn their way into manhood by the training they do for their future career field. Trade schools, apprenticeships, college, dedicated self-teaching – all of these potentially can serve as the ritual needed to gain manhood… depending on the career field that follows. The career field is just as important as the training. The career field must involve creating, fixing or maintaining something of value to other individuals or to society in general. Scientists, farmers, engineers, tradesmen, doctors, mechanics, craftsmen – men who can create or repair things with their hands or minds – these are real men. These men have specialized skills that they have developed through their training and experience, and these skills are necessary for a functioning society.

I got my college training in business. Nobody becomes a man because he got a business degree.

Some boys are able to find other rituals to pass through to gain the confidence necessary to become a man. Some do it through developing skills through hobbies or activities like sports or music where they have a passion (or a natural inclination), and they become masters of those skills to the point that they have confidence in their abilities and find themselves in a state of manhood.

I was too small to be successful at sports, and the only real hobby I have is Pokémon Go. Pokémon Go may actually steal traces of masculinity from a dude, but I can’t just give it up because… you know… you gotta catch ’em all!

Some boys are able to build their self-confidence through dating rituals with romantic partners. Guy approaches prospective partner, guy is rejected by prospective partner, guy remains calm and moves along to the next prospective partner, not taking the rejection personally. This process continues until the guy turns a prospective partner into a partner. This, I have heard, builds confidence. This process continues until the man finds the partner he intends to spend his life with. This is a way to manhood.

I tried, like, a couple of times to approach a prospective partner, but was quickly rejected each time. I took the rejections very personally, I attributed them to the fact that was an unattractive little boy, and they in no way helped me build my self-confidence. In fact, they had the opposite affect and caused me to give up on any sort of romance in my life for years. Luckily, I was set-up with the woman who would become my wife. She was my first and only girlfriend. And even with her, I didn’t gain confidence. We were, after all, set-up, and I would have never asked her out if not for that initial effort made on the part of others.

Of course, there are many false ways to manhood that boys think will get them there – but they won’t. Revving the engine of your jacked-up pick-em-up truck while your parked beside the fifty-one-year-old dude in his Hyundai Veloster and then burning your tires when the light turns green isn’t the way to manhood. In fact, I’m pretty sure this is the way to a future of low-paying jobs and alcoholism… and maybe even a brief stint in county lock-up for roughing up your girlfriend or wife and a guaranteed spot on the Sex Offender Registry. I don’t have any proof of this, but it’s what I think of the douchbag behind the pick-up’s wheel every time it happens to me. Nebraska… it’s not for everyone…

Some people will say that being a man is being a good father, or a good husband, or some other thing that you really don’t have to be a man to do. I’m not going to tell a woman what it means to be a woman, because it’s up to each woman to decide what being a woman is to her. Same with dudes, my definition of manhood doesn’t have to agree with yours. I have my definition of being a man, and I don’t fit that definition. Someone else’s definition is meaningless to me.

So, it’s getting kind of late in the game for me to find my way to manhood, but I’m not too worried about it. Real men are usually kind of assholes, with their stupid self-confidence, high-earning ability and satisfaction with their careers. Who wants to enjoy life that much? Pffft… not me, that’s for sure! I’m perfectly almost semi-content being a 13-year-old boy trapped in a deteriorating 51-year-old body. The meek shall inherit the earth, and I personally feel that this especially applies to human dudes who never reached manhood. We’re the meekest of the meek. Besides, if you really look at the ways that a male can become a man in my writing above, females seem to be surpassing males in many of the areas I discussed. Many women are more of a man than I am, according to my definition of being a man. I know that this may be offensive to women, but real men are closer to being a woman than guys like me. I think women are often amazing, but I like being different than them. I may not be a real man, but real men are more like women, and I sleep pretty soundly holding this little nugget of wisdom…