Manning up

My youngest son passed a benchmark last week, and oddly enough, I have felt out of sorts about it until the events of the past few days. Perhaps, it was because there is no ritual to acknowledge the change and in this - I am decidedly excluded. Maybe, it would have been easier if I could have at least given him a shield, and then I might not have initially felt so out of sorts.

Isaiah Sender is finally was old enough to go to boxing like his older brother and has officially joined the world of men. Yes, I know women box, and even at the club there are a few women training but it’s still the world of men. He is learning the meaning of the phrase to “man-up” in a decidedly old-fashioned way.

The closest I will come to handing him his shield will be later this month when I take Isaiah Sender for his physical and his first piss test. Then I will write a cheque to the provincial boxing association so he will be allowed to step into the ring and learn what it means to fight - to hit and be hit hard.

Every since I dragged his older brother off to boxing, Isaiah has longed to go. I am not sure why the idea of binding up their hands to slip on a pair of gloves and to step into a ring to take on another male in a fight makes their hearts sing with joy but there it is. And it seems it cannot be denied nor should it.

I have told my sons for the first 12 years of their life they are not to fight, and suddenly I am sending them off to learn to do just that. And to do it in a coldly methodical way with precision. I put the bench mark age at 12. There are boys who are younger who box but I am not a big fan of giving the knowledge of hurting without obtaining a bit more experience and judgment than the average 8, 9 or 10 year old possesses. Isaiah Sender should have started this past September but he wanted to play some team sports after school and I encouraged him to do so. Anything to put this day off.

I know I am not progressive nor have I ever claimed the slightest pretense of being. I tried to give my sons a value system which is at odds with most of what passes for ethical education in our schools. I tried to teach my sons to stand up for themselves and not count on the whims of others or the luck of happenstance for their protection. I tried to teach them never to start a fight, nor to hit a girl, a younger/smaller child or a child with an obvious physical limitation. I taught them that it is their moral duty to stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves because that is the proper role befitting of a man.

Years ago when their father and I were young, he was at a crowded nightclub when a man started to shoot-up the club. I should have been there that night but I begged off at the last minute because I was tired and I had a bad feeling about going out that night.

While all the patrons tried to run or find cover their father charged directly into the path of the gunman. He took two bullets in the chest, one in the leg and one in the arm before the gunman was within his reach. Then he broke the man’s jaw, collarbone, leg, and nose before he finally collapsed due to his own injuries.

At the hospital that night, I asked him why he didn’t run for cover like everyone else. He turned to me and explained patiently and without fanfare, “K-T, he could have hurt or killed someone. I knew he couldn’t kill me as long as I came in low and bobbed my head to side to side. Everyone was too afraid. His gun was just too small. I couldn’t have lived with myself if I hid and watch him hurt someone while I did nothing to stop it.” That’s when I knew I was dating a man, a real man, and I needed to not only take him seriously but accord him the respect due to a man.

I expect many things from my sons but most of my expectations are quite ordinary. I expect them to grow-up, finish school, earn a living, get married and raise their own children, but mostly I want them to grow-up to be moral righteous men. At all times and in all circumstances. And if, G-d forbid, they ever find them in a situation where a gunman is running a muck they will not run and hide while others die around them because they will know not only what it means to man-up, but they will possess the knowledge of how to man-up. No old man will have to die to show them how a man lives his life righteously and manly.