Apprentice

Man babies are made not born. Just like sexist pigs. Neither lands on earth fully formed. It takes years of cultivation. Careful sowing and regular watering.

Dads are the farmers. Oh, they’re enabled by the womenfolk who watch from the kitchen window, wipe their hands on their aprons, and fret silently to themselves. But the making of man babies and sexist pigs, well, that’s a man’s job.

Boys learn how to respond to life’s insults and how to cope with women who frustrate them from their fathers. And it’s not what their fathers tell them. It’s what their fathers do.

And that’s a burden for anyone, to be watched day in and day out, to have those little ears in the backseat at every wrong turn and each flat tire. It is tough to have such persistent witnesses to life’s adult messes, to hear the clicking of their small forks on…