Fencing Lesson

Boys are often unfairly maligned.  All of us, no matter what age.  Shiftless.  Lazy.  Indolent.  My favorite is indolent.  Anyhow, in these days and times when video games and I-Pods consecrate the hours for younger men, one may feel that there is no further hope for a hardy outdoorish life.  What Herbert Hoover I think would have called "rugged individualism".  Particularly if you have a father like me.

So, when the Irish Redhead decided it was time to replace part of the fence encompassing our back yard, and a rather menacing pile of boards showed up in the driveway, it was decided that I would harness the unlimited, if somewhat inertia-laden, energy of my son the Future Rock Star and his two best pals that are usually around on Saturdays. You know, teach them some "man-skills".  Luckily, my father-in-law lives with us and he actually KNOWS how to do things like hang fences.

To be honest, I would have bet a million dollars that this experiment would fail.  I just couldn't see three, otherwise very nice, modern teen boys getting much out of this project or having any interest in it whatsoever.  But the great thing about boys like these is that they constantly surprise.  Not only were they interested in tearing down the boards, positioning the new ones, leveling them, and nailing them in place, they relished the work.  After a bit, they made it pretty clear to me that they had it in hand and the three of them did some very hefty work for a couple of hours pretty much on their own.  They were very proud of the result.  I could not have cared less about the fence, but I was supremely proud of them.  At the end, when I told them that, they sheepishly wandered off to slay multitudes of alien zombies on a television screen.

There is hope for boys.  Old and young.  Herbert would be very pleased.