A
BOY NAMED... WHO?
I love the Johnny Cash song, “A Boy Named Sue”. You
can sing it; it tells a story; and it’s funny as @#$%. It’s about a boy who was
abandoned by his father, leaving him with nothing but the name “Sue”. This made
for a hard life for young Sue, who had to learn to look after himself on
account of his name. Sue swears that when he finds his father, he’ll kill him. Hilarious,
right?
When Sue sees the “low down snake” playing stud in a
saloon, he introduces himself and punches Dad between the eyes. Down goes Dad but comes up with a knife and
takes off part of Sue’s ear. Then commences a fight that sends them crashing
through the wall out into “the mud and the blood and the beer”. In the end, Sue
draws his gun first and Dad smiles. He tells Sue he knew he wouldn’t be around
to raise Sue right, so he gave him a name which would kill him or made him
stronger. Tearful reconciliation follows.
While Sue’s father’s methods were flawed, he wanted Sue
to be able to take care of himself when he wasn’t around. All dads hope to
teach our kids that - even though we may go about it in questionable ways, like
my Freedom 16 Plan. My three boys are already
measuring my throne with their eyes but, as I explained to one when we were
playing FourSquare, I’ll always be the king. If they want to
rule the roost, they better find their own. Because I love them, I have
instituted the F16P: I raise them to be able to look after themselves should
they, after 16, feel they cannot handle my kingly ways.
I WANT them to stick around longer than that (well, until
their schooling is done) but, whenever they strike out on their own, it’ll be
comforting to know that they, like Sue, can handle themselves. My lessons may
be more about cooking, driving a car and succeeding in a job interview but
there’ll be some back-alley fighting moves in there too.
