I've been reading about coming of age rituals in the world. I notice in third world countries, such rituals nearly always involve pain and mutilation of body parts with a lot of blood and scarification. Circumcision is common but uncommonly performed on adolescent boys instead of infants. Very painful. Especially so if performed with a ceremonial dull knife. I never understood the biblical god's obsession with penises and foreskins. Did he feel like it was a mistake to construct them together. If it takes losing mine to prove my manhood, I'll have to pass. I'll just have to live with Arnold's judgement of being a girly-man.
When a male Jewish boy turns 13 he is eligible for Bar Mitzva in which he is formally inducted into manhood after which he can read from the Torah at synagogue services or become one of the participants in any ritual or service requiring a certain number of men. Probably the most painful thing about it is learning to read and speak Hebrew. The best thing is at the reception when relatives bring gifts like savings bonds and envelopes stuffed with money in the higher denominations,
In rural Texas where I grew up there is one sure signal that boyhood is over and the fact of his majority is reached and recognized by his father. Whenever there was an event involving a number of females, the men would go in a circle behind the barn or some other secluded spot. Someone invariably produced a bottle of whiskey and someone else a bottle of seven-up for a chaser. I was in college before learning you could mix the whiskey and chaser together and get a smoother drink. The two libations would pass around the circle. After my dad drank, he handed them to me instead of reaching over me to pass the bottles on. It was a silent signal to me and all the others I was now a man. I will never forget the taste that burned my throat so bad, tears leaked from both my eyes and I was so grateful for the chaser and so grateful that I didn't throw up. That was coming of age in small town Texas.
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