Some things become second nature even without being natural. Explain how multiple generations have maintained the inexplicable tendency to randomly stop a whole showroom vehicle and urinate in public?

I mean, look at how we pick up our habits. There’s no rite of passage or module on how you’re supposed to convert every tree, wall fence or ZESCO pole into a toilet – no matter how ticked off you are by the energy crisis. You don’t learn this behaviour earning an out-of-town daily allowance at a workshop in Siavonga.

You don’t watch a YouTube tutorial on how to indiscriminately spit anywhere. After a meal, while driving, taking a walk. How is it other men will never bring themselves to randomly pick a spot and spit in public?

You didn’t get a brochure unpacking how you must scratch or readjust the family jewels in public. You’re self-taught because who sat you down and said when you grow up one day, you’ll find yourself in a supermarket queue and if you feel like moving the hardware around, just do it? 

There are many other manly things we do that we didn’t sit down to learn but have picked up as normal for men. 

Alright, one more. 

How about the fellas in the toilets at malls, airports and bars, walking out without washing their hands? Not a care in the world, shaking hands with unsuspecting chaps, “Yes, boss.” 

We learn these things by association with men that are less discerning that they really should be.

Then we fashion the habits into our own lifestyle and habits. Before we know it, you’re the guy in the workplace that’s never on time or always nibbling on people’s food until you’re full.

Worryingly, you’re not to be left alone with children. You can’t be in charge of finances for a funeral. You can’t borrow a vehicle without bringing it back on an empty tank. Or a dent. 

The things we are not taught tend to stick the most with us in our circle of friends and family. 

You can’t teach masculinity. You live and leave it to other men to pick up. Caring for your children’s well-being because fatherhood is not just school fees and doing school runs. 

Standing up to the workplace’s Handy Andy and calling out sexual harassment, corruption and fraud. It may not win you friends or awards but the reward is a soft, welcoming pillow when you go to bed at night.

We overlook the little things we do as personal to us and inconsequential to the next guy. But if you keep ordering another shot of whiskey, he’ll think one more lager for himself wouldn’t hurt. 

But it does hurt when he doesn’t make it home to his family because of all the things he could have learned that night, he picked drinking and driving. And you didn’t teach him. He learned.