How Not To Be a Boy

by Robert Webb

the thing or two I know about luck. Thing number one: you should do your best to notice luck so that you don’t accidentally take credit for it. Thing number two: luck is not your fault.

it starts with having a family who loves you and someone who inspires you to read. Not because reading makes you smart, although it helps, but because to involve yourself in a story is to imagine what it’s like to be someone else.

Teasing Clever Boys for being impractical is part of a wider ambivalence around boys and education.

Erm, right. So, observational comedy. Things I’ve noticed. That’s how it works, is it? You go around noticing things and then the audience go ‘Ah! Yes! We’ve noticed that too but didn’t realise that we’d noticed. Good one! Good noticing!’

But obviously there are some lines of thought that are unhealthy to pursue, two extreme examples being: ‘How exactly am I going to murder this person who just barged onto the train when people were trying to get off?’ or ‘How exactly am I going to murder myself?’

No, sir. No, lads. No, Daddy. That won’t help us and it won’t help anyone else. Men in trouble are often in trouble precisely because they are trying to Get a Grip and Act Like a Man.

One day he says, ‘Robert, I get this from students all the time, especially the male students. Yes, of course there is always someone worse off than you. But imagine you’re in a doctor’s surgery with a broken arm. The person next to you has two broken arms. The person next to him has two broken arms and a broken leg. This is all very well, but the point is that you have a broken arm and it hurts. The others may indeed be worse off. But they aren’t here this morning. You are. So . . . tell me about your broken arm.’

About halfway through, Ezzie asks, ‘Are dragons real?’ I wrestle with this for a moment, but decide not to lie. ‘No, sweetheart. There are no real dragons.’ Ezzie takes this in and looks again at the pictures in the book. ‘But they’re real in the story.’ Gosh. That’s a good way of putting it. Must remember that one. ‘Yes, my love. They’re real in the story.’

What I’m after is extending that awareness to the half of the population who might still be under the impression that gender conditioning didn’t happen to them because they’ve got a Y chromosome.

Men will struggle to treat women as equals if we haven’t learned to look after ourselves; to recognise our feelings and take responsibility for our actions. We should remember what we knew all along: that we are allowed to be fully human, fully compassionate, fully alive in the moment and fully committed to friendship and love.