Boys to Men

A Scary Story of a Boy Entering Manhood

Me & my Father

When the time comes, a boy must become a man, as too many loud and reckless youths create an unstable society. Throughout history, societies have used rituals to signal to adolescent boys that they must detach from their mothers and walk alone into the unknown. 

In earlier generations, the transition from boyhood to manhood often involved a memorable ritual that marked the shift from relying heavily on family to newfound independence, which naturally came with responsibilities and hard work. It’s a process of discovering what we’re truly capable of, both by building ourselves up and shedding what doesn’t serve us or society. It’s about letting go of behaviours we could get away with when we were younger, like pranking, bullying, and taking excessive risks. Now, we had to be strong and compassionate at the same time—to serve and protect.  

The Sateré-Mawé people from the Brazilian Amazon have their 13-year-old boys undergo something called the “bullet ant initiation.” It is a gruelling test of endurance that borders on sadism, where these boys are forced to wear gloves woven with hundreds of bullet ants for 10 minutes at a time. If you haven't already guessed, these ants pack a powerful sting that likely feels like bullets ripping into your flesh. The objective of this ritual is to test the boys’ courage and for them not to cry out in pain, indicating they are ready for manhood. As a side note, it's no wonder that men today have a hard time expressing their emotions. 

The Mardujara Aboriginals from Australia also have a flesh mutilation ritual for entering manhood. It includes an appendage, but this time not the hands. The initiation for their young boys includes circumcision, followed by subincision, described as a surgical modification of the penis. This might be one of the first recorded penis modification procedures known to man, but based on the latest plastic surgery clinics for men popping up in Miami, it certainly isn’t the last.

Me & my Mama

When I was growing up, the tradition for entering manhood didn’t involve any painful rituals or insects, and I got to keep my foreskin—bonus. In fact, it wasn’t painful at all; it simply required us to keep our hands at 10 and 2, use one foot for the accelerator and brake pedal, since using two feet meant the car would do a brake stand, which I later learned to do and replicated for my young son while in a grocery store parking lot in a rented Camaro, just as my father had done for me. As long as we didn’t pull any of these stunts during our driver’s exam, we would likely pass and have our first initiation into manhood rewarded with a set of keys and forced to drive whatever car our parents owned.   

“Born to Be Wild” by Steppenwolf is probably the theme song that plays in most boys' heads when they first get into their parents' minivan, turn over the engine, rev it a few times, and drive away from their childhood homes as their parents wave at them with feelings of melancholy—but mostly dread.   

My initiation was similar, but in a Malibu station wagon, with, I might add, Pirelli sport tires. I passed my driver's test earlier that day, just in time before the big snowstorm. I didn’t hesitate to ask my parents if I could borrow the car, and after some subtle gaslighting, I convinced them it was a good idea. 

My brother was my partner in all things risky, so he jumped in the car with me, and we headed to our best friend's house to pick them up. They were brothers as well and roughly the same age as my brother and me. The men, since my friend and I had been initiated and were now card-carrying adults with a driver's license, sat in front, and my brother and his friend jumped in the back. 

The snow had started to pile up quickly, and I could barely see ten feet in front of me as we cruised through town, looking for other boys who still needed to be initiated so we could show off and demonstrate our superiority. Now, we weren’t limited to walking; instead, we were in a station wagon with Pirelli tyres. There were no youths out that particular night, but along a stretch of highway just outside town, we did come across someone who appeared to be homeless and was trying to hitch a ride. 

He looked quite frightening as we slowed down to approach him. He might have been in his forties, unshaven, looking very dirty, with a ragged, oversized winter jacket. Getting closer, I could see his face more clearly, and it might have been because I had just watched the movie, “Nightmare on Elm Street,” but this guy was a spitting image of the main character: Freddy Krueger. Instead of the weathered brown fedora, he was wearing an old, tattered black toque. This didn’t make him look any less like Freddy, though, and we all were taken aback by his appearance as we crept closer to get a better look. 

Having only been initiated into manhood for less than a few hours, I still had a lot of boyhood in me, so I pulled over for a prank, steering the car onto the side of the road and signalling to the person we will from here on call Freddy, that he just got a ride out of this terrible snowstorm. My brother and my friend then looked at me, wondering what I was doing, since it wasn’t obvious that picking up this hitchhiker was a safe thing to do. As he approached the rear of the vehicle, I did something that had my brother and our friends in stitches. I floored the accelerator, causing the rear wheels to spit up snow into Freddy’s face. The car fishtailed as it crawled back onto the road with the wheels still spinning out of control. 

But this wasn’t good enough for me; I wanted to take this prank even further, feeling invincible in my Malibu station wagon, even against someone as scary as Freddy. I was egged on by my co-pranksters who were literally along for the ride in this winter adventure which was about to turn into a nightmare. 

I immediately pulled off to the side of the road again, hoping that Freddy would approach the car again. He did better than that; as I looked into my rearview mirror, I saw him running quickly towards the car. My passengers were as startled as I was and started screaming at the top of their lungs, not much different than the screams I had heard earlier while watching “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. I hit the gas pedal, but within seconds I knew it was too late. The slippery snow made the overweight station wagon a sitting duck for Freddy as he ran towards us. At this point, we realized that we had woken up the bear, and Freddy wasn’t happy about being duped and wouldn’t be fooled a second time. 

Photo by Enrique Guzeman

As my passengers yelled at me to “Go! Go!” I shouted back, “I can’t! I can’t!”, the car’s wheels digging ruts into the snow but going nowhere. That’s when we all heard a thud on the roof of the car. I looked back and didn’t see Freddy, confirming the worst: he was on top of our roof and was hitching a ride whether we liked it or not.   

Finally, the car gained traction and began to fishtail down the road as we noticed Freddy’s legs hanging off to one side before vanishing and reappearing on the other side. He was gripping the roof racks, and there was no way to get him off as he swerved wildly left and right, spinning the steering wheel uncontrollably. Now I was screaming too, regretting that I had gotten us into this mess, knowing it wasn’t going to end well. I would imagine that the cars passing us on the other side of the road thought the same, witnessing a group of teenagers screaming in an out-of-control car with a guy perched on the roof who looked like he had just stepped off a horror movie set. 

Several hundred metres down the road, all of us in full panic, swerving left and right trying to get him off the roof. There he was, looking at us upside down through the front window. I thought we were all screaming as loud as we could, but we all found a new level.

And then he was gone, or at least we thought. I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw nothing but swirling snow as the car sped down the road. We only had an instant before the screaming stopped, until the rear passenger window shattered into pieces as Freddy’s gloved hand reached in. I veered to the right and onto the side of the road in an attempt to throw him off the roof and into the ditch, and it worked. Freddy was tossed into the snow’s abyss, hopefully gone forever. 

The cold air kept rushing into the car through the broken window as we drove down the road in silence. A few minutes later, we reached the town, and not long after that, we were startled again by flashing lights and a siren. We had caught the attention of many drivers who probably thought they had seen a bizarre “stunt driving” incident. Little did they know we were being attacked by a madman, or at least a man who was more than mad at the teenage town idiots. 

After explaining to the police that we had been attacked by a man who matched the description of “Freddy,” they decided to take us all to the police station. I used my improving gaslighting skills and, somehow, after spending the night there, convinced them that we were innocent. My mother had to pick us up, which was just as frightening as being detained overnight at the station. But we all made it through, and of course, swore we would never do it again. Still, we were just boys and had a lot more growing up to do, so there would be many more unnecessary close calls ahead. 

Photo by Karl Hornfeldt

Is there a point to this story? Other than to tell a tale of my wild youth, since my kids are old enough to know they should do as I say, not as I used to do. 

Yes, there is.

It’s about the boy inside all men, who, at some point, must be diminished; the self-aggrandizing bully who habitually seeks to harm or intimidate those they perceive as vulnerable needs to mature into the man who is encouraging, supporting, and empowering. The man who leads and protects others, who can be counted on and shoulders responsibility, who knows that purpose and meaning in life involves great sacrifice.  The man who doesn’t throw temper tantrums when they don’t get their way, and is cool when things get heated. 

Whether we are fortunate enough to have an initiation that doesn’t involve us losing skin, ultimately, we all have to grow into men. And it’s the elders' job to ensure this happens. 

And another thing, the best way to handle a bully is to stand up to them, since bullies are only protected by a fragile layer of false pride, and they don’t expect anyone to confront them—until someone does—and then they step back, hopefully to do the work required to be a proud and useful man.

Me & My Boy