There are few things more impulsive than a teenage boy when accompanied by other teenage boys. Put two or more within the same vicinity and their brains shrink to the size of a worm and the little sense of reason they possess as an individual goes right out the window. It’s just a scientific fact.
So when I discovered at ten this morning that Billy and Justin had not slept at all yet, my thoughts flew back to my own unsupervised teenage years. EEK!
But all it took was a walk around our property to find every trace of what they’d done…and to realize that given the proper tools…boys will be boys.
Given the tools…
Boredom breeds irrational thought which eventually leads to destruction. Give them something to do…or suffer the consequences. Boys have a natural tendency towards exactly the opposite of what you want them to do, therefore you must guide them somehow in the opposite direction at all times…even, in this case, while you sleep.
Upon opening my front door this morning I found, lying across the front lawn, a heap of bikes. So they’d been riding. Excellent. Exercise instead of lethargy. Oxygen into the lungs instead of nicotine. I imagine they spent some time in the darkening hours taking jumps in the back yard over, and over, again until they’ve perfected the twist, or the landing to their loftiest satisfaction. High flying…instead of being high.
I rounded the corner of the house towards the shop and found they’d removed the pickup bed from Billy’s project truck. Huh. Not sure what prompted that but I figured there are worse things they could have done. Four hundred bucks well spent, I’d say, for the hours of hands on education he’s gotten from diving right in. Even if it never runs. Even if it never again looks like a truck. Even if he spends another thousand buying rusty parts to add to it…the payback is invaluable because given the tools…a boy will learn, all on his own, the skills to last a lifetime.
Beside the dismantled truck lay an equally dysfunctional bike, in pieces on the concrete. Strewn amongst our heaps of things we have years worth of bikes. The three small boys ride them until they fall in a shamble on the dirt pile and Billy picks them back up again, rearranges their parts to make one from three like an ultimate transformer, and makes them look brand new…only so the small boys can tear them to bits again. But for a brief moment their faces shine as they peddle their shiny new bike and feel as if they, themselves, have been born again. Two birds with one stone, I say, as both older and younger brothers get their moment to shine and nobody is out getting drunk when they are too busy aspiring to greatness with a wrench and a paint can.
Give them the tools and if you do things right…and pray a lot…and get really super lucky…they will use that can of paint to refurbish old bikes for their little brothers…instead of inhaling the fumes until they can no longer breathe. And while I’m thinking about it…go talk to them about huffing. Right now…before you find their body on their bedroom floor because they thought that only doing it once in a while was okay. Give them the tools…and you could save their lives.
Give them the tool of imagination. Sometimes, provide them with less. Take away that video console through the summer months. Revoke the phone if they are obsessively texting. Turn off the cable television. And they will respond. They will, out of boredom and the need to move their bodies, begin to use their dormant imagination to create. They will surprise you.
Behind the shop, as I passed the land clearing pile of trees and rubbish from years past, I saw what they’d spent the bulk of the morning doing…from four a.m. to ten. And though it looks like an accident waiting to happen and it will need dismantled before the small boys cave to temptation and climb inside the death trap…it is actually an engineering masterpiece created by sixteen year old boys who were being just that…boys.
Let’s build a fort, they’d said, remeniscent of a youth nearly spent. And in their strong, nearly adult bodies, they were able to create what, as small children, they had only dreamed. With nothing more than their hands, no nails or saws, they had fashioned a shelter worthy of praise. Perhaps in it they can hold on to some sense of the innocense that drifts away with each sprouting facial hair. Maybe in those six hours they reverted, if just through the night, into an age they may never feel again. And with the tool of imagination, solidified one last carefree memory before the wrath of adulthood takes over.
And I, I slept soundly knowing that my boys will be boys and somehow they will live through it. I slept knowing that given the right tools…the tools needed to stay the path…to succeed, a boy will do just that.
