The Boy Within
One afternoon on a multi-day rafting trip with twenty boys from a youth detention centre, we pulled the rafts onto a gravel bar and watched a family of river otters playing in the shallows.
Before long every boy was watching.
What I remember most is not the otters but the faces around me. For a few minutes the usual toughness disappeared. The boys laughed freely and pointed excitedly whenever one of the animals surfaced. One youngster who spent much of his life trying to look dangerous was grinning like a ten-year-old.
Then he realised somebody was watching and immediately the grin vanished.
That night around the campfire, I found myself wondering who these young men had been before the world taught them who they were supposed to become.
Not the offenders sitting in front of me, but the boys who had collected beetles, rescued injured birds and cried when a favourite dog died. The old nursery rhyme came to mind; What are little boys made of, so I said, “What were you like when you were little?” I asked.
At first there was silence.
Then one boy told us how he used to bring injured birds home. Another spoke about helping his grandmother in the garden. One admitted he had spent hours rescuing tadpoles from puddles after rain.
As the stories drifted around the campfire, I realised I was listening to boys who were much like any others.
Australian writer Tim Winton once suggested the goodness is literally squeezed out of boys.
Looking around that campfire, I wasn’t so sure. Maybe the goodness had not disappeared at all but had simply learned to keep its head down.
For a little while that night the masks had slipped, and there before me were the bird rescuers, tadpole savers, dog lovers and dreamers they had always been.
The river rolled quietly past in the darkness, and as I sat, it seemed to me that the goodness had never really left these lads; it had simply been waiting for somebody, or somewhere, to welcome it home.
The Boy Within
He rescued birds with broken wings,
and treasured frogs and little things.
He cried when old dogs passed away,
and dreamed of what he’d do someday.
Then came the lessons, loud and clear:
“Stand up tough.”
“Don’t show fear.”
“Keep it in.”
“Keep it near.”
So year by year he learned the part,
and built a wall around his heart.
The mask grew strong, the wall stood tall,
yet goodness lingered through it all.
Yes deep beneath the tough-guy show,
the boy inside refused to go.
A helping hand.
A kindly deed.
A quiet care for someone in need.
The goodness never went away.
It didn’t pack its bags one day.
It simply found a place to hide,
and quietly waited there inside.