The Boy and His Companions by Everett T. Tomlinson

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 3, 1916

The Boy and His Companions

By Everett T. Tomlinson

It is a rude and sometimes a sad awakening which comes to many a mother when she first discovers that her boy is a gregarious animal. In her own heart the strongest of feelings has been her love for the boy, and then suddenly to learn that on his part there are elemental forces and impulses that outweigh his appreciation of her love and sacrifice is a shock that seems well-nigh cruel. He may be foremost in her life, but she is not first in his. Such a moment is almost critical for both. To him the call of his fellows is as natural as the call of the wild to the wolf or as the flocking together of birds of a feather.

“I am completely baffled,” said the young mother of a four-year-old, “by my boy’s running away. I have tried punishments and I have tried rewards, but nothing seems to cure him. The sight of the neighbors’ children will draw him every time, in spite of all I can say or do.”

“Cure him?” The young mother might as well have tried to “cure” her boy of hunger or of breathing. Stronger than his fear of punishment or his love of rewards was his instinctive desire to be with others of his own age. Her only reasonable course would have been to recognize the inborn impulse of her boy, and wisely direct it, without attempting to eradicate the ineradicable.

Strange as it may appear, it is right here, in this failure to recognize the nature of the boy’s longing for companionship, that more mothers than we think fail and more boys than we know are harmed. The mother’s knowledge of the possible corrupting of good manners and morals was less than her ignorance of an evil still greater—the lack of contact and attrition.

A young lawyer thirty years of age, a college man of parts and promise, of excellent physical appearance and bearing, said to me not long ago, “I am satisfied that my work is never going to tell very much.”

“Why not?” I asked in surprise.

“I’ll tell you. I know my law books fairly well, but I don’t know men. It’s too late for me to begin,” he added hastily, as I started to protest. “Here I am thirty years of age, and I ought to have begun before I was five. I was an only boy, and my mother never let me play very much with other children. She thought she was going to save me from contamination, but what she really saved me from was being normal. She was always good to me and generous beyond her ability, but no one will ever understand what I suffered when I went away to college. I wanted to be liked, and I

think I had it in me, too; but from the very start I was ‘queered.’ If my mother had not kept me from playing with other boys, I shouldn’t be where I am now.”

There was a note of bitterness in his voice which the smile on his face could not conceal; and hardest of all was the knowledge that what he had said was true.

The Boy and His Crowd

And not only for the boy’s pleasure, but also for the very best part of his education, does he need his fellows. There is nothing like the brutal frankness of boys with boys, and it is in such associations only that he learns what he is really worth. Defects, which the father ignores or the mother condones, there are called by their true names. If the boy has been coddled at home, his mates generously provide the antidote. If he has been unduly praised, it is certain the weakening process will not be continued by “the fellows.” If he has had his own sweet will, by vigorous and sometimes compulsory methods he will be compelled to recognize the rights of others.

Whatever may be the later successes or failures, one thing is certain,—that no one ever passes for what he really is worth as does a boy with his own crowd. In all this world nowhere is such exact and ideal justice found as in the dealings of boys with boys. Even in the nicknames they so freely bestow upon one another, the same law of innate, almost instinctive justice, prevails, for boys are like the original savages, bestowing the name upon the individual which he has earned; and no other; and the name which at last is bestowed is far more likely to be the true name than the one which, after diligent search, was given by the father and mother.

Mercy is a quality which in most boys has to be cultivated. Justice, however, is immediate and instinctive. Not how fine a lad, how good a ball player, how excellent and lovable a boy his mother is certain her boy is, but the measure of regard “the other fellows” have for him is, in most cases, the true test. Without such testing and candid judgment few men are prepared for the later struggle of life.

“What are those boys quarreling about?” demanded a woman who was calling at a friend’s home one summer day. Through the open window had come the noise of a dozen boys who had assembled for play in that natural rendezvous of all normal boys,—the barn of a neighbor.

“Quarreling?” laughed the woman of the house. “They are not quarreling at all. They are playing hide and seek, and, incidentally, are candidly, and somewhat noisily, I confess, giving one another the benefit of their opinions. They would be greatly surprised if you should accuse them of quarreling. I don’t believe there’s a thought of unkindness in all their clamor. It’s as natural for boys to shout as it is for puppies to bark.”

“Prink” and “Pat”

Not long ago a widow brought her only boy—a well-grown, handsome lad of fourteen—to enter him in a well-known school for boys. “He needs a man’s hand now,” she explained to the head master.

“Where has he been in school?” inquired the master.

“He has never been in any. I have always had tutors for him.”

The head master smiled (in his experience the name of the new boy was legion) as he said, “He may need a man’s hand, as you say, but he needs a great deal more the hands of the boys. Leave him, and we’ll see what can be done.”

“But,” protested the mother quickly, “that’s just what I wanted to speak to you about. He hasn’t been used to boys, and I’m afraid their ways may annoy him.”

The boy was placed in the school, and within three days his “education” at the hands of his schoolmates began. They nicknamed him “Prink,” and then proceeded to upset his bed and room daily. They put him at first base, and “fired” balls at him till his hands were swelled and sore. They tripped him when he was not expecting it, they “bothered” him in countless ways. Even the younger boys looked upon him as legitimate prey.

At the end of a week “Prink” came to the head master with complaints. “I don’t like it here. My mother has written me that I can leave if I want to.”

“Yes,” assented the head master, “that’s true. You may leave. That may be best.”

“I can’t stand the boys,” declared “Prink,” almost in tears.

“Did you ever think that they couldn’t stand you?” inquired the head master kindly. And then, in response to the look of astonishment in “Prink’s” face, he continued: “You see, the boys here have an idea that you are not up to their mark. Your ways are more like a girl’s, and this is not a girl’s school, you understand.”

“What can I do?” said the lad.

“You can be a boy and like boys. If the boys mess up your room, put them out. Above all, don’t show that what they do annoys you. It will be hard, but you can do it. Be one of the boys, as well as one with them. Try it for three months. If at the end of that time you still want to leave, you can then run away from it all. That’s what every coward does.”

“Prink” remained through the year, but when the summer vacation came his name had been changed to “Pat.” The change in his nature had been even more marked. He had learned some lessons not outlined in the curriculum, and his teachers had not been members of the faculty only.

Excellent and necessary as the companionship of other boys may be, still there are evils which must be guarded against and perils to be avoided. A young boy ought not to be permitted to have older boys as his companions. And yet who does not know the persistence of the younger boy in this very direction? He may be teased and tormented, by some strange fatality he is “it” in every game, he is the fag of the crowd, and then, despite all his sufferings, he will be eager on the next day to go right back to the boys who have made life a torment for him on the preceding day. Strange infatuation, but one we all recognize and know.—Everett T. Tomlinson, in the Woman’s Home Companion.