The Art of Manliness: Classic Skills and Manners for the Modern Man (24 page)

7. Fold it in half along the original crease. It should now look somewhat like a right triangle.

8. Take one of the diagonal edges and fold it down toward the original crease.

9. Repeat on the other side.

10. On the bottom of the plane, make a small ½-inch rip about 5 inches from the nose. Make another tear ½ inch behind the first rip. This should create a small tab. Fold it up. This will hold the two sides of the plane together while in flight. You’re now ready to engage in high-flying adventures with your kiddos. Have fun.

How to Make and Fly a Kite

Kids love flying kites, and it’s even more fun for them when they get to make the kite themselves. You’ll enjoy it more too, knowing that instead of a forty dollar kite stuck in that tree it’s just a garbage bag and some sticks.

Materials you’ll need:

• two wooden sticks (One needs to be 35 inches, the other needs to be 40 inches. They must be light enough to go airborne but sturdy enough not to break in flight. Bamboo or thin wooden dowels that are ¼-inch in diameter work best.)

• plastic garbage bag

• masking tape

• garden twine

• craft knife

How to build it:

1. Start building the frame by forming a cross with the dowels. Lay the 35-inch stick across the 40-inch stick, about 9 inches from the top of the 40 incher. Tie the two sticks together with some twine. Secure it further by adding some masking tape.

2. Place a small notch at the end of each stick with the craft knife. The notches will hold the string that will go around the kite frame.

3. Take your twine, and starting at the bottom, thread the twine through each notch all the way around. Repeat this step, being sure that the string is kept taut. Finish at the bottom and tie a knot. Place masking tape over each stick end. This will ensure that the string won’t pop out of the notches. You’ve made the kite frame.

4. Cut open the garbage bag and lay it flat on the table. Lay the kite frame on the bag. Cut around the kite frame on the plastic bag, adding an extra inch all the way around so that you can fold it over and eventually tape it to the string frame. This is your kite sail.

5. Fold the edges of the trash bag kite sail over the string frame and tape down with masking tape.

6. Add a tail. Tails have both a practical and aesthetic function. Their most important function is that they keep the kite flying upright. They also make the kite look cool. You can get creative with your kite tail. Add some crepe paper streamers or just cut a 6-foot-long piece of twine and add some short cloth strips down the length of it. Add the tail to the bottom of the kite.

7. Now it’s time to make the bridle. Cut a piece of twine about 5 feet long. Poke a hole through the front of the sail at the point where the two sticks of the frame meet. Thread one end of the twine through the hole, and tie it to the point where the two sticks of the frame meet. Poke another hole through the front of the sail about an inch from the bottom of the kite. Thread the other end of the twine through that hole and tie it to the stick.

8. Make a bridle loop by taking about 8 inches of string and forming a loop. Tie off the end of the loop with a simple overhand knot. Cut off any excess string.

9. Attach the bridle loop to the middle of the bridle string. This can be done with a simple slipknot over the bridle string.

10. Take the end of the string on the twine spool and attach it to the bridle loop by tying a simple overhand knot. This is your fly string.

Next week: duplicating Ben Franklin’s experiment with electricity.

Have “The Talk” With Your Kids

The Talk. The Birds and the Bees. Most men don’t look forward to discussing sex with their children. But in this oversexed society where sexual images are just a mouse click or a channel flip away, it’s important that you discuss the subject with your kids. Don’t let late night TV or kids at school teach your kids about sex. Be a man and take charge of this important part of your child’s education and development.

Have more than just one talk.
The Talk should actually be a series of conversations you have with your kiddos throughout childhood. So don’t put pressure on yourself to have one talk. There’s usually no need to sit them down formally for a lecture. Just naturally share your advice when the topic comes up in conversations. Start talking about sex early, and keep the conversation going throughout childhood and their teenage years.

Use age-appropriate information
. When your toddler asks where babies come from, there’s no need to get into the details about intercourse, much less condoms and date rape. As they get older, give them more information that is relevant to them. One way to find out what type of information you should give them is to answer your kids’ questions with a question. If your eight year old asks you, “What’s sex?” ask them, “What do you know about it?” Based on their response, you’ll know how to respond.

Take the initiative.
Don’t wait for your kids to bring up the subject. Be a man and find opportunities to educate your kids about sex.

Make your values about sexuality clear.
Different families will have different values about sex. Some will have a strict abstinence approach, while others would rather have their kids practice safe sex. Make your values about sex clear to your kids so there isn’t any confusion down the road.

Know your facts.
Read up on the subject so that when your kid starts asking questions you’ll have the correct answers. If your kid asks you a question that you don’t know the answer to, don’t make up an answer. That will only cause confusion later on. There are plenty of books out there that discuss sexuality and how to talk about it with your children. Read up on them.

Don’t hide the fact that Mom and Dad have sex.
While no kid wants to think about their parents doing the deed, you shouldn’t pretend like you and your wife took vows of chastity at the altar. While you need not share private or explicit examples from your marital sex life, it’s okay to reveal that you’re drawing from experience when answering questions. It’s important to convey to your kids that sex is a natural and healthy part of a committed relationship, not something yucky or embarrassing.

Be open to questions.
Let your kids know that you’re always open to questions. Tell them this explicitly and repeatedly. It’s better they come to you then find out from a friend on the playground or the Internet.

Relax.
Kids can smell fear. If they see that you’re uncomfortable talking about sex, they’ll get the idea that sex is this bad thing that shouldn’t be discussed or they’ll go to a source who doesn’t break out in cold sweats at the mere mention of the word vagina. Man up by staying calm and collected.

Give Your Son a Rite of Passage

When it comes to the journey into adulthood, girls seem to mature faster and make a smoother transition than boys do. Without something to propel them out of it, male adolescence often extends into a guy’s twenties, thirties, and in some especially sad cases, even further.

Ancient cultures didn’t have to worry too much about men-children loafing around the village mooching off their parents, partly because they had ceremonial rites of passage that served as a clear demarcation between childhood and manhood. These rites of passage were elaborate occasions, celebrated by a young man’s entire village and used to initiate a boy into the art of manliness.

Today such rites of passage are unfortunately almost extinct, and boys lack clear markers and helpful mentors on their journey to becoming a man. If you ask them when the transition occurs, you will get a variety of answers: when you get a car, when you graduate college, when you get a real job, when you get married, when you switch from Honey Nut to regular Cheerios, and so on. The problem with many of these traditional rites of passage is that they have been put off further and further in a young man’s life. As traditional rites of passage have become fuzzier, young men are plagued with a sense of being adrift.

Of course the process of becoming a man, ceremony or not, does not happen in a single moment. But rites of passage are important in delineating when a boy should start thinking of himself as a man and shouldering the responsibilities of manhood. Lacking these important markers, many young men today belabor their childhood, never sure of when they’ve manned up. A father can help his son avoid this limbo by creating for him meaningful transition points on his passage into manhood.

Manly Advice: When Should the Rite of Passage Occur?

Before deciding what the rite of passage will be, you’ll first need to decide at what age your son should take part in it. A good time to take your son through a rite of passage into manhood is after he graduates high school. By then, he’s about eighteen years old, the age at which society legally deems him an adult. Also, he’s about to begin a new chapter in his life. A rite of passage will help him navigate the new path he’ll forge for himself.

Creating a Rite of Passage for Your Son

While the whole village will no longer turn out for your son’s rite of passage, a family is a very small community unto itself, and parents may create unique familial ceremonies in which their sons are inducted into manhood. The options for such a ceremony are limited only by your creativity. Consider the following:

Enroll your son in Boy Scouts.
This is the easiest option. The Scouts have built in “rites of passage” that increase boys’ skills, responsibilities and feelings of competence. You can enhance the experience by being a Scout Leader and encouraging your boy to make it to Eagle Scout.

Figure 5.11 Enroll your son in Boy Scouts. You can enhance the experience by being a Scout Leader and encouraging your boy to make it to Eagle Scout.

Draw up a list of tasks your son must learn to perform himself.
If you don’t want the structure of the Scouts, you can create your own goals for your son to achieve. When he has mastered all of these skills, throw him a celebration in which you present him with a medallion of some sort to commemorate the occasion.

Increase the significance of religious ceremonies.
Religious ceremonies are some of the few rites of passage which are still widely recognized. Yet these ceremonies can either be a big deal, an occasion in which a boy truly feels like he is transitioning into manhood, or they can be just another thing he is supposed to do. A dad can make sure it’s the former by impressing upon his son the importance and solemnity of the occasion. As the time for the ceremony draws closer, schedule weekly events in which you discuss the principles of your faith, your personal views on weighty matters and your advice on being a man of faith.

Take your son on a long backpacking trip.
After a series of father/son camping trips, plan an excursion in which your son is responsible for all the necessary duties: making the fire, setting up camp, navigating, cooking food, etc. Along the way, impart all the manly wisdom you have gleaned from life experience.