I've been saddened, disillusioned, disappointed, and surprised at the amount of children coming to camp whose parents have labeled them few choice letters from the alphabet and found a medicine to correct their errant behavior. I'm warned time after time to watch out for that one, he's a little too active for his own good.

It seems I'm apologizing a lot recently in my posts, so I'll spare you the penitent treatise; I'm not sorry for my position on this: When did being a child turn into a mass psychotic quandary which can only be treated by doses taken three times daily after each meal (which cannot include red dye number 4, 3, 5, 1, 2, yellow dye number 1, 7, 3, 2, green beans, or meatballs)? When did shooting hoops, finding snakes, hanging upside down from the Beech trees, mischievous duals, being a boy become illegal? When did winning the war grow to become a faux pas and swordplay turn into playstation? Why is it that we have to cut chocolate cake dripping with icing out of their diet, but we inject their bodies with poison of a worse kind?

And when, please tell me, did treehouses become a hazard to their health?

Because I've been watching, and I know I'm young (and childless, and idealistic, and quietly opinionated), but playing hard, until your insides are tired and your jeans have holes in the knees and there is dirt caked underneath your fingernails and your mom has called you in for bed at least four times, seems to me the epitome of boyhood. The beginning of true manhood. It is during those belly-crawls, those whittling branches, those anticipatory moments when your pulse is beating so loudly you can feel it with every inch of your person, and even the moments when your face in buried in the book of James, your fingers painstakingly rewriting it for the tenth time, your mouth slowly learning to bridle itself, it is in those moments that warriors are made.

So when child after child has been brought to me over the past several weeks, complaints over their behavior, their fallible character smeared through the mud -but trying desperately to maintain some sense of cleanliness and, for goodness sake, acting beyond its age- I've stooped down and put my hand on their head and asked them one question, "Did it make you feel like a man?"

Usually the answer is no; they scuff their sneaker in the dirt and wipe the back of their hand across their face, averting their eyes, they know as well as I do that they've done something wrong. But a couple of times the answer has been yes, with a glimmer of delight in their face. It's those times that I remember how important it is for these boys to become men, to love the duals, but to love the accomplishment which comes from self instigated resolution. We fix the situation, which is never really as bad as it seemed in the first place, and we both grow up a little more.

Boys to Men. They're not made by stuffing their spirits in a prescription bottle and sending them to Special Ed. They're made of conflicts and resolution, wars and victories, strategies and discipline. They're made of appreciation and support, pride and encouragement. They're made of dirt and grime and all things boyish. Even when they're all grown up.