Recently whilst moving house I was packing up my shelves of books and I rediscovered an old book I had found at a garage sale years ago. It's called On Becoming a Man....
Author; Harold Shryock, M.A., M.D Associate Dean of the School of Medicine, College of Medical Evangelists, Loma Linda, California
To put it simply it's awesome. Written in the 50's it has all the attitudes of a 50's society, some completely atrocious points of view and actually some bits that are true even today. I gather it's one of those books nervous parents would throw at their sons when they asked one too many questions about why girls had soft bits and nice lumps. So over the next few days or weeks I'm going to scan a few choice excerpts from each of the 19 chapters. You'll start to notice that there are some heavy religious overtones to the book but to be honest there are a heap of funny bits that aren't directly religious so I wont necessarily always be focusing on that aspect (that would be too easy). Oh and the pictures....yes the pictures
Chapter 1: Advantages of Being Teen Age
Let's go pro, who wants to be one of those tradesmen types anyway
Masters of their own destinies, well with that shirt and that jacket destiny should be very afraid.
The cover, I don't have the dust sleeve that would have come with it
I opened the book and start reading and within seconds I'm feeling pretty shit about being in my middle life. I really feel disillusioned about all of my obligations right now, sheesh, after reading that I'd be hangin to stay teenage forever. This book is scary.
Wait! What? Nobody told me when I was 13 that I had two choices, rich or saintly. This is how it all went wrong for me, clearly.
Let's turn a few pages, hopefully it gets better
Yeah, look, I don't think I can argue with that too much. Girls were pretty sissy back then, they smelt funny too.
This paragraph is my fav so far, hilarious, "Of course, you did not play with dolls" "considering they were 'girls' " "....except that boys wear trousers and girls wear skirts"
Hmmm, I remember be mostly concerned about that mornings pimple and not getting beat up by the ACDC crowd at school that day.
I sure did notice some differences in girls and in me and yes I was very curious. "off the girls" - brilliant term
Well that's chapter one, 18 to go, trust me it gets better and better, especially the sections of masturbation and homosexuality.
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