Robert Majors

By: Mel Perks

Robert (Brad) Majors Jr., born in 1953, is 15 years and 364 days old—almost sixteen—and caught squarely in the chaotic in-between of boyhood and manhood. Polite, well-mannered, and raised in a clean-cut, all-American home, young Robert is the sort of lad who says “yes sir” to his father and holds the door for his mother—but beneath the surface, the storm of adolescence is in full swing. He has a growing collection of “forbidden” magazines tucked behind the radiator, a fascination with girls he doesn’t fully understand, and a face that turns red at the mere suggestion of anything remotely embarrassing.

At school, he’s well-liked—one of the gang—always up for tree-climbing, creek-dam building, or throwing water balloons at the local girls’ school. He idolises his dad and dreams of one day becoming an engineer, often fiddling with broken radios or drawing spaceship schematics in the back of his exercise books. He’s awkward, excitable, and still figuring himself out—a young man on the edge of discovery, torn between being respectable and being alive.