Big Bog Pants

​ 
Big boy pants
 
Been thinking a lot lately 
 
about my role as a male
 
who happens to be a father
 
a teacher, a counselor, and a friend.
 
Been thinking about my big boy pants.
 
It seemed I often heard as a child
 
“Be a man.  Big boys don’t cry.
 
Man talk.  Don’t be a sissy.
 
Don’t be like a girl, a woman.
 
Desire women but for serious time
 
seek out guys/the men.   
 
Respect your mother.
 
Remember, girls are just for one 
 
thing but they will make you “pay
 
and pay and pay.”
 
Big boy pants were not pink, frilly, 
 
or allergic to dirt.
 
Big boy pants were tough, rugged and 
 
made for doing big boy tasks
 
Big boys were Gene Autry, The Lone Ranger,
 
Hopalong Cassidy, big bad Arnold, Clint Eastwood,
 
John Wayne, for those went to the barn to drink and 
 
smoke.
 
Big boy pants were good for playing in the dirt or with other 
 
boys and their balls – basketball, football, baseball and later 
 
soccer, golf, racquet ball and perhaps hand ball.  Tennis was a 
 
little suspect.
 
Big boy pants were a guard against becoming what I  
 
was not allowed to say in front of my mother but the 
 
initials were PW.
 
Big boy pants make you desire girls and later women. 
 
Your conquests were like notches on a belt to be 
 
compared and shared.
 
Well, only if you do not marry the conquests. 
 
Who did marry “them?”
 
Big boy pants are good for wars and killing the
 
bad boys.
 
Big boy pants took you to the woods after the
 
wars to privately grieve and fight the demons
 
which the killing of others in big boy pants left.
 
Big boy pants have wires which connect to the 
 
brain of the person wearing them causing
 
them to say things like, “Yup, now I am shackled and 
 
trapped doing the honey do list.” and calling the love
 
of your life, the B word.
 
Big boy pants hide the tenderness and the fact that you 
 
love and cry and get tired or know that you do not know and 
 
have to keep tightening the belt to hold up those pants.
 
Big boy pants hide us.
 
Have I taught my son to live this lie or 
 
was I wise enough to hide the big boy pants in the 
 
box on the porch into which his friends checked their 
 
guns, toy soldiers, tanks, and violent video games.
 
I hope I left them there in that box.
 
Written  October 14, 2016