Boys Series 37: What Is a Boy?

Between the innocence of babyhood and the dignity of manhood, we find a delightful creature of a boy. Boys come in assorted sizes, weights and colors. But all boys have the same creed: to enjoy every second of every minute of every day and to protest with noise (their only weapon) when their last minute is finished and the adult males pack them off to bed at night! Boys are found everywhere: on top of, underneath, inside of, climbing on, swinging from, running around, or jumping to. Mothers love them, little girls hate them, older sisters and brothers tolerate them and adults ignore them. A boy is truth with dirt on its face, beauty with a cut on its finger, wisdom with bubble gum in its hair, and the hope of the future with a frog in its pocket. When you are busy, a boy is an inconsiderate, bothersome, intruding jungle of noise. When you want him to make an impression, his brain turns into jelly or else he becomes a jungle creature, bound on destroying the world, and himself with it. A boy is a composite. He has the appetite of a horse, the digestion of a sword-swallower, the imagination of Paul Bunyan, the energy of a pocket-size atomic bomb, the curiosity of a cat, the shyness of a violet, the audacity of a steel trap, the enthusiasm of a fire cracker, and when he makes something, he has five thumbs on each hand. He likes ice cream, movies, Christmas, comic books, the boy across the street, woods, water in its natural habitat, large animals, trains, Saturday mornings, and fire engines. He is not much for Sunday school, composing, music lessons, neckties, barbers, girls, overcoats, adults or bedtime. Nobody else is so early to rise or so late to supper. Nobody else gets so much fun out of trees, dogs, and breezes. Nobody else can cram into one pocket a rusty knife, a half-eaten apple, 3 feet of string, 2 gumdrops, a five-cent slingshot, a chunk of unknown substance, and one supersonic code ring with a secret compartment. A boy is a magical creature–you can lock him out of your workshop, but you can’t lock him out of your heart! You can get him out of your study, but you can’t lock him out of your mind! Might as well give up! He is your captor, your jailer, your boss, and your master. But when your dreams tumble down and the world is a mess, he can put together the broken pieces in just a twinkle with a few magic words…I LOVE YOU!!
-Alan Marshall Beck

Boys Series 36: Pinocchio

“The blue fairy watched him running and playing in the room, lively and happy as a young rooster crowing for the first time and said, “Then my medicine really cured you?” “It certainly did! It brought me back into this world.” “Then why in the world did I have all the trouble getting you to drink it?” “That’s how we boys are! We’re more afraid of medicine than of being sick.”

-C. Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio

To become a real boy you must prove yourself brave, truthful, and unselfish.
-C. Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio

Boys Series 34: The Inalienable Rights of Little Boys

We believe in the inalienable rights of little boys:
To have mothers who are good pals.
To get dirt on their hands and clothes, to ask questions, to make a healthy racket…to express themselves and have a place in the sun… to bring pockets with marbels and nails, and acorns and corks and chalk, and so on.
To learn to laugh at themselves and to take a joke and a hard knock or disappointment.
To know the world of outdoors — the brooks and trees and birds and flowers — personally, and in the nature books; to meet those dare-devils, Tom Mix and Rill Hart, and also the best people of history and literature — Huckleberry Finn, the Knights of the Round Table, Arnold von Winkelried, Nathan Hale, Robinson Crusoe, and others.
To play at all hearty games and sports — pirates and the Indian and coasting and ball and skating, and to go swimming in the ole’ swimmin’ hole.
And to be indulged in half holidays and red roast beef and pink ice cream and circus parades; and to be spanked — or the equivalent of justice administered, when necessary — and to be permitted an occasional green apple.
We believe in the inalienable right of little boys to be greatly loved and cared for.
~Yeoman Shield

Boys Series 33: Lord Byron

Ah! Happy Years! Once more who would not be a boy!?

-Lord Byron

Boys Series 31: Peter Pan

No one is going to catch me, lady, and make me a man. I want always to be a little boy and to have fun.

-James M Barried, Peter Pan

Boys Series 29: Little Master Mischievous

Little master mischievous, in the cookie jar,
Who has ever told you where the cookies are?
Now your sticky fingers smear the curtains white;
You have finger-printed everything in sight.
There’s no use in scolding; when you smile that way
You can rob of terror every word we say.
-Edgar Guest

Boys Series 26: Old Yeller

A boy, before he really grows up is pretty much like a wild animal. He can get the wits scared clear out of him today and by tomorrow have forgotten all about it.
-Fred Gibson, Old Yeller

Boys Series 25: I Wish I Were A Boy Again

O for one hour of youthful joy!
Give back my twentieth spring!
I’d rather laugh, a bright-haireds boy,
Than reign, a gray-bearded king.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes

Boys Series 24: Hidden Treasure

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.

-Mark Twain, Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Boys Series 23: Blessings on Thee, Little Man

Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And the merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still,
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim’s jaunty grace;
From my heart I give thee joy,
I was once a barefoot boy!
-John Greenleaf Whittier