*Well, not entirely. According to the shirt my parents got me in third grade, Boys will be
boys good humans. But unfortunately, many boys will not be good humans, and will instead be
boys—that is, toxically masculine men with a total disregard for others. Not every boy. If that
was the case, I wouldn’t be writing this essay. But still, more than there should be.
Because of this, I sometimes feel disconnected from my fellow boys. I live every day in
constant fear that someone will see me, think “hmm, he looks like a manly bro dude man,” and
then on my next birthday give me a lifetime supply of Red Bull scented deodorant. This could
and will happen if I am not vigilant.
I’m not entirely sure when the disconnect began. I guess it wasn’t too noticeable when I
was younger. Back then, I didn’t really pay much attention to gender. I saw different binaries. I
saw my kindergarten classmates as either my friends or my enemies. Big kids or still in naptime.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or that rat they fight—I, despite knowing nothing about it, was
involved in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles roleplay group in kindergarten.
I think I first became fully cognisant of the gender divide in first grade, when the recess
yard was divided between two factions: the Pine Tree Warriors and the Defenders of the
Friendship Tree. I was a Pine Tree Warrior, as were two of my friends—both boys. Meanwhile, most of the girls in my grade were with the Friendship Tree. Our goal was to take over the
Friendship Tree—how exactly I’m not sure—and rule over recess.
We had a back and forth going for a while. I think I was a bit less into the takeover aspect than my friends, though. My idea of conquering the Friendship Tree was loitering around and chatting with its defenders while occasionally making battle noises. Things continued as they were into my second grade year. But then something happened: a new student joined the school. Her name was Chloe (changed for privacy reasons), she was in third grade, and she became the first female Pine Tree Warrior.
I’ve never particularly loved chaos or disorder. I imagine most people would probably
say the same, but I also consider a lot more things to be chaotic than most people. Naturally, not
liking chaos to a very broad degree made it somewhat hard to make close friends with
seven-year-olds. But Chloe and I seemed to be on the same wavelength. Because of this, she
quickly became one of my closest friends. As my friendship with Chloe grew, less and less time
was being spent on the Pine Tree-Friendship Tree War, making recess a decent bit more fun for
me and a decent bit less fun for my fellow Pine Tree Warriors. After all, what use are two
soldiers who do nothing but wander off and talk about a bunch of real world stuff? Eventually,
one of the Pine Tree Warriors had enough; he hit one of the other members and punched Chloe in the stomach before quitting.
Our ranks were getting smaller, but I didn’t really care much at that point; I had a
friend—and probably the closest one in my life at that point. Less and less of recess was being
spent plotting Friendship Tree regime change and more and more of it was being spent sitting
under neutral trees to talk about our day, favorite things, and dreams for the future. But things
could only stay that way for so long. The Friendship Tree was thirsting for blood.
On one sunny (school) day, my parents decided that they wanted to go on a hike together as a family. I didn’t want to. I hated—and still do—missing school. But I was attending a fairly loosey-goosey Montessori school (aside from the Portuguese/drama/ballet teacher who always insisted on calling butts “gluteus maximuses”), so my opinion didn’t have much sway. We went on the hike and I remember nothing about it. It was boring. Hardly worth missing school over.
I’m not sure I would remember what my second grade locker room looked like if not for
what happened the next day. The middle of the room formed a corner dotted with coat racks,
with one side of the corner facing the school’s entrance and the other the left wall. The whole
place was slightly cleaner than you’d expected and painted a sterile light grey—the type of grey
that it feels dishonest to call either white or grey. There was a group of girls talking. Something
had happened yesterday. Chloe had defected to the Friendship Tree.
“Oh.” I was gone for one day and my best friend had switched sides. I suppose it wasn’t a big enough thing to destroy my whole world, but it certainly threw it out of rotation. Chaos.
Confusion. No, clarity. Unfair clarity. I knew what had happened and why. Without my being there, Chloe had nobody to talk to during recess—I was the only boy she liked hanging out with.
So, she ventured over to the Friendship Tree and hung out with them. The girls. And she kept
hanging out with them during the next recess. And the one after that and the one after that. I
stopped going over to the Friendship Tree after that.
Chloe didn’t come back the next year. Her father had gotten a job offer in Oklahoma. I
didn’t really talk to her much beforehand. If we interacted, it probably wasn’t more than a couple
of awkward glances, alternating when we thought the other wasn’t looking. I don’t remember
talking to her on the last day of school. I’m not sure if I waved goodbye or even saw her. But
years later, I learned someone did: my mother. Years later, she told me that, before picking me
up, she had spotted Chloe crying under a tree. Probably one of the ones we used to talk under.
She sat down and talked with her. Apparently she was crying because it was all over. Both the
school year and our friendship. Had she not been moving, she probably would have tried to
reconcile with me in September. I think I probably would have if that happened. But it didn’t,
and there was nothing she could do; we had both missed our shots at becoming friends again. I
I wish the whole thing had a happy ending, but it didn’t. I have not seen nor heard anything about
Chloe since.
My next three years in elementary school were less significant in the gender divide
department. But things really started to pick up again in middle school. I was the only new kid at
the beginning of my seventh grade year, so I had to find friends amongst kids who had known
each other for years. I ended up stumbling into one of the robotics teams, which was, for the most part, pretty chill.
Most of the other guys in my grade were very much boys in the “boys will be boys”
sense, but they were, for the most part, kept on leashes by the eighth grade guys. The majority of the eighth grade guys were still “boys will be boys” boys, but they had learned that they existed in a society that required a semblance of order. But once they graduated, things very quickly fell apart.
There weren’t any robotics teams my eighth grade year, so that arrangement kind of
collapsed. I was still pretty good friends with a couple of guys on the team. We got along alright,
but ultimately, we were too different to spend all day together; the only thing we had in common
was that we were the three most orderly guys, and that was by default in their cases. As the year progressed, they spent less time with me and more time with the other guys playing football shirtless and whatnot.
There were also the eighth grade girls, but I could really only spend so much time with
them. I think, had I been a girl, I would’ve ended up pretty good friends with them, but my situation with them was similar to the Friendship Tree; I could come over and chat for a bit, but at the end of the day I was still a boy and they were all girls. Boys will be boys, after all; even if
some boys are more of a boy than others, all of the boys are still boys. Boy. Boy. Boy. I don’t
like the way that word looks. I feel as if it should be a Scandinavian word for seal, not a noun
and an adjective that mean two different things yet are also the same thing.
It was evident to everybody that I was a boy (noun), which surely meant that I was also a
boy (adjective). It was like I had this giant and glowing nametag on at all times blaring out “EIGHTH GRADE BOY — LOVES LOUDNESS — PROBABLY LIKES PLAYING SPORTS!”
In reality, whenever someone asks me what my favorite sport is I say chess to annoy them.
But everybody saw it and everybody took note. Including the other eighth grade guys.
Throughout my eight-grade year, I was subjected to countless conversations about the unoriginal derogatory nicknames they had come up with for the girls, how much they wanted to ask out and then promptly ignore said girls, how they were sorry they had to end our conversion early but Brad was on the couch and they were in the mood for cuddling, how everybody knows that hockey players are the biggest players, how they should be teaching us how to do taxes instead of algebra, how boring learning how to do taxes is, and uh-oh—they accidentally left their phone on in front of their mom and she decided to check and huh—she’s never heard of this website, she wonders—oh. Oh dear lord.
One thing I noticed in eighth grade was that whenever the teachers split us into groups for school trips—generally into three or four groups—they would try to make sure each group had a responsible person in it—an eighth grade girl. But then, my groups started not to have any. My teachers had noticed that I possessed a rare streak of structure. I was a designated responsible person. Granted, it meant that my time in those groups was less fun because I had to spend it all trying to keep order, but it was something.
But then, on the final trip we ever went on—a backpacking trip in Michigan’s Upper
Penisula—they gave up and put us with our friends. I ended up with most of the eighth grade
girls and one of my two male friends. Almost all of the other boys traveled together. Thirty
minutes into the ride, we pulled over at a rest stop. Everybody in our van got out except for me
and the teacher driving it. And as I sat there, the teacher driving the boys’ van came up to the
driver’s window and simply said “They’re so mean.” His voice was sad but unsurprised. After
all, boys will be boys.
Boys will be boys. What was originally an excuse for the bad behavior of boys became a
rule that boys are expected to follow. You are a boy. Be a boy. But those two things mean two
different things. The first is a noun, the second is an adjective. I am a boy but not a boy. Looking
back on that shirt my parents got me, I think that it’s wrong. I have met many boys who are not
good humans. Many young boys will grow up to be bad humans, regardless of what a shirt tells
them. The word “will” is definitive. All encompassing. Boys will be boys. Boys will be good
humans. I think the shirt should’ve just said Boys will be boys good humans many different
people.