Boy, oh Boy, oh BOY!

By: L.A. Kohl
April 9, 2005
(published in the April 20, ’05 edition of the Bullseye, Vol. 1, No. 26)

On occasion I have heard about radical feminists who believe that there is no difference – other than obvious physical ones – between males and females. They believe that women are only “conditioned” by society to be the nurturing, care-giver types, and men are conditioned to be the “strong, adventurous” types. Otherwise, we’d all be basically the same.

All I can say to that is – they must have never had a boy of their own!

We have a nearly ideal set up to produce an atypical, “girly girl” male – if that were possible. Our one and only son (who just turned two years old) has six big sisters. This amounts to all types of female influence and “conditioning” opportunities. He’s surrounded by dolls, dresses, emotional ups and downs, and “Eeeek...it’s a snake!” types of reactions.

Let me just say for the record...it isn’t working.

When he was a few months old, one of his first words was “vroom, vroom." None of our girls ever did that. Their first words were things like “Dada”, “kitty” and “ducky." Well, he got the “Dada” one – but after that came words like: car, boat and tractor.

Anything with a motor in it gets his attention. He notices machinery and big trucks when we’re going somewhere – he loves to shout “TRACTOR!” whenever he sees one out in a field, or anything that remotely resembles one, like a bulldozer. He has talked about airplanes ever since we took his dad to the airport back in January. Hardly a day goes by that he doesn’t say, “I gonna fly airplane!” A few days ago he watched a helicopter, so now he not only wants to fly in one of those; he claims he’s going to “drive a heh-coper."

What about aggression? I don’t believe that boys are just “conditioned” to be more aggressive than girls. This boy, born into a house full of females, goes around pointing his finger and saying, “Bang, bang, bang!” for the fun it. Any stick, pencil, or broom handle is fair game...when he swipes it up into his little hands, it is now a sword, and you better watch out. He has clobbered a big sister many a time, thinking he was just having fun. To his sisters’ credit, they don’t always put up with it. One time, after Josiah had done some dastardly deed, I heard his three year old sister yell out, “You better run for your life!”

My girls have always enjoyed being outdoors, but my boy takes it to extremes. So far this spring, I have found him alone outside three times, when no one let him out of the house. I finally figured out his trick...if the window is open, he climbs on something, pushes on the screen until it pops out at the bottom, then out he goes. My girls were never that desperate to escape.

Most kids like animals, right? I have a few girls that even like frogs and lizards, but all but one draws the line at snakes. A few weeks ago when the four youngest children were outside together, Josiah was sitting on the ground playing happily. Then, they all spotted a small garter snake slithering within a few inches of Josiah. The females, in one accord, began screaming and crying...they thought their little brother was history. He just gawked at the snake and his sisters like “what’s the problem?”

Those liberal, free-thinkers can talk about equality and conditioning all they like, but I’d like them to explain away little Josiah. I think he’s living proof that “boys will be boys!”