A week ago and yesterday,(seperate incidents), two grown boys told me to get out of their face.
I call them boys on purpose. They looked to be in their forties. Old enough to have kids. Old enough to know better.
I am an old man. I was not in their way. I was not looking for trouble.
“Get out of my face.” That was the whole sentence. Tossed at me like trash out a car window.
I have been thinking about it ever since. Not because it hurt. Because it told me something.
It told me what is missing.
I was raised by elder men. Men who came up hard and stood straight. They did not teach me to be tough. People get that wrong about the old ways.
Tough was never the point.
They taught me four things. Be respected. Protect. Provide. And be an example to other men.
That was the whole of it. Four duties. Carry them and you are a man. Drop them and you are something else, no matter how old you get.
Manhood is not an age. It is a load you pick up and carry.
A boy grows older on his own. Nobody has to do a thing. He just waits, and the years come.
A man has to be made. Somebody older has to show him how. And then he has to choose it, every day, on his own.
So let’s hold those two up against the four duties.
Respect. They had none for an old man in a public place. Not a nod. Not a pause. Just a shove made of words.
Protect. A man protects the one who is older, weaker, or alone. They did the opposite. They picked the easy target.
Example. Somewhere there are young eyes watching men like that. A son. A nephew. A boy in the next aisle. What did he learn today? That a grown man talks that way and nothing happens.
Three duties failed in one sentence.
That is why I call them boys.
Now, I want to be fair. I did not come here to throw every man under 60 in the same ditch.
I know men of every age who still carry the load. Young fathers who get up before daylight and work all day and still show up for their kids. Men who hold the door and mean it. Men who step between trouble and the person who can’t handle it.
To those men, I say this. I see you. You are rarer than you should be, and you are worth more than you know.
You are carrying something heavy that the world stopped teaching. Keep carrying it.
But I will say this too. There are too many grown boys out there. And somebody has to say it out loud.
Where I came from, a man who talked to an elder that way would have answered for it. Right there. From the older men in the room.
A physical action of correction and a word of advice behind it, the cost was real and instant no discussion, a reminder of their place as a man.
That was not cruelty. That was the cost. Disrespect cost something, so nobody paid it lightly.
The manners held because there was a spine behind them.
We lost that spine, and the manners went with it.
Somebody was supposed to make them men. A father. An uncle. A coach. An old man down the street who would not put up with it.
Some of those men were never there. Some were there and looked away. Some were just boys themselves, raising boys.
So the load never got handed down. And you cannot carry what you were never given.
That does not let them off. A grown man chooses. At forty, you know right from wrong. You know you do not get in an old man’s face.
But it tells us where the break is. It is in the handing down.
So this is for the grown boys.
You are not finished. Not yet.
The day you pick up those four duties is the day you start becoming a man. Not before. Not by age. Not by size. Not by how loud you talk.
Respect the people around you, especially the old and the small.
Protect the ones who can’t protect themselves.
Provide for the people counting on you.
And live so the young eyes watching you learn something good.
That is all it takes. It is simple. It is not easy.
And this is for the men who still carry it, at any age.
Your job is bigger than you think. The load does not pass itself down. You have to hand it to somebody.
Find a boy. Your son, your grandson, the kid next door. Show him. Let him watch you do it right, over and over, until it is his.
That is how I got it. Old men gave it to me.
I am an old man now. So I am handing it to you.
Those two boys will forget what they said to me. I won’t.
But I am not angry anymore. I am just clear.
We don’t have a tough problem. We don’t have a manners problem.
We have a handing-down problem.
And every real man left standing can fix it, one boy at a time.
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This post was drafted with AI governed assistance and reviewed and directed by Michael S. Faust Sr. before publication.
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