One of my favorite books growing up was Jay J. Armes, Investigator: The World’s Most Successful Private Eye written in 1976 and published by Macmillan. I remember holding the hardcover book in my hands and wondering how the man on the cover, Jay J. Armes, was able to shoot a gun with hooks for hands.
On March 15, 2005 on a farm in Venango, Nebraska, 14-year-old Brandenn Bremmer — Gifted and promising — held a .22 caliber varmint rifle to his head and pulled the trigger. He didn’t die immediately. When his parents found him he was still breathing. Brandenn’s body was airlifted to Denver, Colorado where his organs were harvested over the next two days.
When we moved to New York twenty years ago from Nebraska — after first deferring through Washington, D.C. for a year — we rented a giant, three axle, Ryder truck for the price of a van — they were out of vans when we arrived with our prepaid reservation — and we motored into the muggy urban core of the Big Apple by driving down the wrong way of a one way sliver of Riverside Drive near Columbia University in the repressive heat of a mid-August afternoon.
In the graduate school class I teach, I open the semester examining moral homilies — stories that are used to manipulate behavior in childhood for the greater good of society — and, I ask my students, why are most of those homilies rooted in religion and culture instead of the law or the economy and what were the moral homilies that formed you growing up?
Yesterday we discussed the idea of when a Girl becomes a Woman and that discussion leads us into today where we try to answer when a “boy” becomes a “man” and, in my experience, there are three areas where tests are applied to make the difference clear:
Culture
In certain cultures due to religious beliefs or work that must be done, boys become men as young as 12 and 13 with responsibilities to the community and in jobs that advance the culture and understanding. They may not be encouraged to marry at that age but they are given greater “adult” responsibility in the tribe and the family. Many consider that transition the mark of a man.
Fertility
Growing up in Nebraska it was generally considered among boys you became a man when you had your first ejaculation — either alone or with someone; but usually alone and during the night — because you had the power to help create life and that ability, even if not maturely accepted or verified by the outside world, meant you were a man because you could have a blood commitment to protect someone you brought into the world.
The Law
Reaching legal age where you can sign a contract is also, for many, the bright line transition from Boyhood into Manhood. You are held socially responsible for your overt acts and if you misbehave you will no longer be considered a child — your punishment will find you in an adult circumstance.
If you are female, which term do you prefer if you had to be labeled by one of these words: “Girl” or “Woman” or “Female” or doesn’t it matter?
When I was an undergraduate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln I was educated, roughly and roundly, by certain forces in the English Department that one must never call a female a “girl” if she has had her period — how one determines if menstruation has happened or not was never explained — and the correct term for the rest of her life was “woman” but never “lady” because “lady” was an Olde Englishe synonym for “bitch.”
Ladies and gentlemen rightly translated to the modern ear, I was told, as Bitches and gentlemen and it was an unfortunate, but culturally accepted, put-down of women who fought to advance their self-worth beyond being seen merely as property.
We have been out of Sacramento for 24 hours now so it’s time to look back and share some impressions while they are fresh and of the mind and not the memory. Flying into Sacramento is like diving into a miles long patchwork of streams and parcels of farmland.
You feel like you’re landing in a pasture when your plane touches down. There is no doubt this part of California thrives on agriculture and living from the land. This Sacramento Reloaded post generally deals with experiences within a 30 minute walking radius of the Sheraton Grand hotel in four directions of the wind.
1. Everything closes at 5pm. Good luck finding an open deli or a Starbucks or a restaurant if you’re thirsty or hungry at 5:01pm. On the East Coast we are used to the 24-Hour Deli and eating and drinking joints that close at 2:00am and open again at 5:00am. Our hotel only served food in their restaurant from 6:30am-2:00pm and from 5:30pm-9:00pm. If you were hungry in the afternoon you were on your own! We are used to hotels having eating places open for 24 hours a day.
2. Janna noticed the children in Sacramento are more fearful than those in New York City and Jersey City. Sacramento children walk in fear of strangers and they make too much eye contact that reveals their terror. On the East Coast, children do not worry if you’re a local or a tourist — is there a difference? — they just go along with their business and don’t bother looking you in the eye unless you cause them trouble and then they stare you down eye-to-eye to send terror into your being! Sacramento children appear more vulnerable and unnerved by the unfamiliar than their East Coast peers.
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