A few good men (not another Tom Cruise post)

Even if I get credit for nothing more than encouraging him to shower every couple days and to brush his teeth before bedtime, I'm pretty confident my 15-year-old boy is going to turn out okay.

The author of this piece, "Guns don't kill people - our sons do" in today's USA Today, is however worried in general about boys in our society and  making them into good, young men. Warren Farrell is author of Why Men Are the Way they Are. He is co-authoring a book with John Gray, titled Boys to Men. He notes, among other things:

For boys, the road to successful manhood has crumbled. In many boys' journey from a fatherless family to an almost all-female staff elementary school such as Sandy Hook, there is no constructive male role model.

Fortunately, my son is blessed with many constructive male role models, and in various ways every day I see how their maturity, manner and humor affect the way he carries himself.

There's my friend the forest ranger who has undertaken the role of his outdoor hunting guide and fisherman. My son doesn't just pay attention when he describes the subtleties of why the pheasants are most likely to fly up out of one direction over the other, but also picks up the more meaningful nuances of my friend: that he's on his church council, that he loves and respects his wife and daughter, that he has a soft spot for his dogs, and that one can speak softly and still command attention.

There's my boss, of whom my son can recite his favorite line regarding politics or sports: "Win with dignity, lose with grace."

There's the young priest who my son worships with, talks with and exchanges texts with on much deeper religious questions than I can offer an intelligent response to. He sees the devotion, the caring, and also the humor one can have while attending to the problems of others.

There's his uncle, a former Army Ranger, bronc rider and fireman. He sees in him a zest for life, a zeal for helping others, and a love of family and his boys.

While my son is not around each of these people every day, he is around one or more of them almost weekly. In the meantime, he also has a principal and  football coach he respects, male teachers he admires, friends' fathers who are good people, and good young role models from a nearby college we frequent.

I have noticed something else in my son, and it is that all of these people have helped him set a high bar for others who enter into his life. He has certain expectations of adults now, and when he runs across those who don't meet this standard, for whatever reason, he politely disregards them, and their words and actions don't carry much weight with him and later receive an eye-roll as he recounts to me the encounter. Already at his age, it seems he doesn't suffer fools lightly.

He is definitely blessed in ways some young men are not, through no fault of their own. If more young guys had even a fraction of the involvement of positive male role models he has, the world would be a better place. Perhaps Farrell's ideas are one way to attempt that.

I don't know what my son is going to be in the future. I'd say it ranges from FBI agent to priest, a pretty wide gamut. But whatever he becomes, he will be a good one because of all these fine men who will have helped make him a fine man.

As for me, frankly, all I need to do is stay out of the way, pat him on the back  ... and keep the refrigerator full.