Werewolves

Moonlight streaming through the clouds hits a man. Hair grows denser and longer. Muscles bulk up. Teeth and fingernails grow longer and denser, becoming fangs and claws. In moments, the man is transformed into a raging engine of fur, muscle and claws, hell-bent on destroying any and all that he encounters, the countryside falling to his appetite.

Werewolves are one of our most enduring myths; there is not a single culture that doesn't have some legend of lycanthropes, and most have a number of creatures. Scientists have even gotten into the mix, with several explanations of how the myth could have started, with several theories running around. I'm going to look at another.

You need to consider that the changes wrought by lycanthropy are the same as those wrought by puberty, just not as dramatically. The boy becomes hairier, as well as gaining muscle mass. There is no question that the boy's temper becomes worse, as hormones take control and change the boy into a man. During this, his appetite increases to fuel his change.

Consider that for a moment. A boy at ten and that same kid at eighteen are physically different enough that it's hard to believe that they are the same person. The ten-year old is basically hairless; the eighteen-year old is virtually covered in the stuff, and in places that the ten-year old doesn't have any. The eighteen-year old is definitely smellier; the ten-year old could go for days without a bath, even with hard play, without really smelling as bad as the eighteen-year old does after a few hours of laying around. A ten-year old is a wimp compared to most eighteen-year olds, where even the weakest teen-ager is capable of feats that the younger boy would find hard to reproduce. Not to mention that the ten-year old just isn't capable of the raw anger that the eighteen-year old is; maliciousness, sure, but in a cold calculating way rather than raw anger.

In short, could it be that every culture has werewolves is because they all have teen-age boys? The transformation may be in years rather than mere moments, but the effect is the same: You take a meek, mild-mannered hairless boy, and puberty transforms him into a raving hairy monster. There isn't some mysterious disease or weird condition; it's just a metaphor for something that happens to all guys around twelve years of age or so. I'm not trying to de-mystify it; I'm trying to point out just how important it is. It's important enough that people have created myths about it, and it's something that scares everyone: Ever heard of a pleasant old myth about werewolves?

But that it happens to all guys is an important detail. And rather than trying to look at it as something new, you need to realize that what you're going through is the same thing that all men have gone through, as well as a number of older boys. So, yeah, you should be afraid; you should be very afraid. But let's see if I can help you walk through the Big Stuff.

This blog is all about the boy's transformation into an adult. Not only are there going to be some scary periods, there are going to be some fun times as well. I'm not going to be nice about this; it is going to be a scary time. However, any period of dramatic growth can be scary. I can only hope that this will be of some use to not only the boy, but the boy's family as well.

But I guess I should deal with the parents first. After all, they need some guidelines on how to deal with the kid...