When Do Boys Become Men?

And also at my meeting today… a woman we know who is 94 fell and broke her hip. I’ve written of this feisty cantankerous woman before. Remember the funeral and the Fierce Hair comment? She sometimes wears beauty parlor clips sticking out of the front of her hair like she is trying to channel for aliens. She doesn't care what anyone thinks, an amazingly independent woman.

Her hip accident was announced at the meeting so we could send cards and then our Regent said, “We’ll be keeping abreast of the situation through her boys.”

Through her ‘boys’? If MJ is 94, then lets do the math as to how old her ‘boys’ are. I’d say… between 60 and 70. She has three (3) of them… and if she had the first at 24 (she was an educated woman), then the eldest would be 70. Every two years from there, as I know they are, her ‘boys’ would be 66, 68, and 70 respectively. I know for a fact that these ‘boys’ are grandfathers. I’ve seen pix of her great grandchildren. Her grandchildren are OLDER than I!

My friend sitting next to me is telling me how perfectly awful MJ is being, a real pain in the ass and giving her daughter’s in law all sorts of holy hell. These are not 20 year old new brides. These are WOMEN in their 60s! And she is still as nasty to them as she was when they got married in their 20s. These daughters in law are talked about like they are young young women. New brides. Cracks me up.

I think ‘boys’, I think men under 30. Sorry men. I just do. Of course, exceptions are made. But even if they are serving our country, being men, I still think of them as someone’s boy. Perhaps it is the Mom in me. I don’t know why. But the older they get, the less I am able to think of men as ‘boys’. At some point, in my mind, they grow up.

But I am reminded of the story of The Great Omnipotent One with Grandaddy. I don’t know where they were. My Dad was over 45 at the time. I believe he was retired… a retired Navy Captain, pilot, had been CO of a squadron, had commanded men, and when Grandaddy introduced him to whoever, he said, “And this is my boy, Buddy”. (Every Southern son has to have a nickname. Or so it seems to me.)

TGOO said he had to laugh quietly to himself. He would forever be his father’s boy.

And today, I listened to these women talk about MJ’s boys and I shook my head as I realized that if they walked in the door right then, these ‘boys’ are older than my Dad. And I KNOW that I would have to walk up and say, "So you're MJ's boys. I've heard so much about you..."