More Than A Number

I was asked to be a contributing author to Code M magazine on the topic of becoming a man.  This was my essay:

It was typical as a teenager to look forward to reaching the age of twenty-one and becoming a “man.” A definition established by age but not deed. After having achieved that goal, it never occurred to me that I hadn’t yet arrived.  What I learned in retrospect was that there was no defining moment, no specific situation, and certainly no age attainment that established my manhood.  Rather, it was an accumulation of events that contributed to the transition.

Some would say I became a man at the age of seventeen when as the summer activity director at Hough Elementary, I stopped an adult from dragging a woman by her hair across my playground. Or the time I stopped a football player at Ohio University from taking advantage of a drunken co-ed when I was eighteen. Or it might have been the time when I brushed fear aside and helped set up an ambush for the Klan when they decided to invade our campus at Lincoln University at the age of twenty-three.

Certainly, I felt of age after college when I got my first apartment confident I could handle my business.

But then I got drafted.

The Army advertises making men out of boys. In basic training, I scored 500 out of 500 on the physical training tests.  In Advanced Infantry Training I won the pugil stick and the 45 pistol championship. In infantry Officer Candidate School I graduated near the top of my class but through it all,  I can’t pinpoint whether or if any of my Sergeants ever gave my manliness a thumbs up even though physically, I was up to any task they requested.  Was it possible they knew something I didn’t?

Maybe it was when I disembarked from a Huey helicopter my first day in Vietnam and watched black body bags being stacked like cordwood in Cu Chi thus becoming aware that life was not a given. Or when the realization hit me that I was not only responsible for my wellbeing but for every soldier in my platoon. It certainly could have been when we were taken by complete surprise at Dau Tieng where I and five men stopped the enemy from breaching our perimeter while some of our comrades fell.

In hindsight, though, all of those incidents and more helped shape and reshape my psyche placing me at the threshold of adulthood. But it was only after returning home from the war that I understood the last step for me was to kill the demons lurking in my subconscious from the cumulative effect of all those previous events and to achieve the peace of mind and confidence that would allow me to be a good father, son, and/or friend.  Because ultimately, regardless of your history or your age, manhood is more about your ability to stabilize and become a caring and responsible person to those around you than accomplishing any physical achievement or reaching any number prescribed by society.