Do Boys Grow Up? Ever?

Identify the Adult in This Picture

Maybe some boys grow up. Perhaps in other times, boys grew up. But I'm not sure that nowadays boys really ever become men.
This may not be entirely a bad thing.

I suppose boys become "men" when they have kids, go to work instead of hanging out at the bar or in the airport lounge and they save money so they can buy a house and send their kids to college. But give any one of those grown up men a glove and a baseball diamond and a bunch of 8 year olds and he becomes, instantly, a kid again, trying to strike out the four foot opponent 60 feet away. You will say, that is an aberration, a momentary return to childhood. But, eventually, the kids leave home and those heads of household revert to form. I would argue the aberration is the guy who goes to work every day and acts like an adult. Something inside does not get any older than 18. That is the ceiling for male maturity. 
I've seen forty year old fathers come to blows at their kids'  little league games, soccer games, and certainly at their kids' wrestling matches. 

Unreal

Beaver Cleaver's father would never have done that, but I never knew a father like Beaver's, in real life. 

Sunday was the first baseball game of the season for my league. I actually got a base hit, which I'm sure surprised many on the field, and when I arrived, out of breath, at first base, the first baseman grinned at me and asked me how old I was, amazed a gimpy guy like me could swing a bat and hit a fast ball thrown by someone half my age, maybe less than half my age. 
"Eighteen," I started to say, and then caught myself. No, I am actually no longer 18, in the physical world of trips around the sun, definitely not 18.  Past that. Mentally, definitely no better than 18.  Call it arrested development. 
Put me in the same position I was in when I was 18 and I will be no smarter, show no more cool or reserve than I had before all my current experience. 

My son, one might argue,  has grown up. He slogged his way through pre medical curriculum in college, a model of deferred gratification. Then medical school, more deferred gratification, and now he  is a vascular surgeon. He is shown operating on his favorite patient to date. That would be Holly, an 800 pound gorilla at the Bronx Zoo. Ask him about his best experience ever and he will tell you all about the gorilla. He might hesitate a moment and consider one championship or another, meeting his wife in the gross anatomy lab,  but ultimately, it is the gorilla.  He has been to see her several times since. He is not a veterinarian. He, ordinarily operates on human beings. But the gorilla, that was the best experience in his whole life, so far. He will not say this in hearing range of his wife, but we all know it's true. He loves his wife, but Holly, well, that goes beyond love, to the sublime.  

Holly and Friends

Women, I know, are different. They actually do grow up. Some have babies, but all of them gain a certain composure and experience benefits them, and makes them more competent and confident.  They actually mature. They do not react to men or boys the way they did when they were 18. They are no longer nervous. They learn; they grow.
Boys just get older, no smarter.
That is the major insight for today from The Phantom. 

You're very welcome.