Happy Boy Scout Day
Did you know it was Boy Scout Day? I didn’t get a notification from the National Eagle Scout Association about any events happening in the capitol. Maybe some troops somewhere celebrate? I only know because my wife’s Farsi teacher makes her students prep for conversations and today’s topic was the value of youth organizations. I think her teacher uses a National Day calendar. Tomorrow is pizza day! That, I will celebrate tonight (and tomorrow).
The Boy Scouts. Competing feelings play Capture the Flag with my heart.
I grew up camping once a month with the Boy Scouts. Before internet in your pocket, I knew life-saving First Aid. I got certified as a Life Guard first at Boy Scout summer camp. I backpacked ten days in New Mexico mountains and canoed twelve days in the Minnesota boundary waters. I cooked over fire, that yes, I could start with one match, or flint and steel, or a magnifying glass and fuzzed up Red Cedar bark. (I never could get it lit with string, stick, and rubbing). I had skills and fun and friends that all the school kids that teased me lacked. So, the teasing was easy to shrug off.
In junior high, the school kids called me gay for being in Scouts. (In the early 90s, being gay = bad). In college, Scouting’s policy of not letting gays in was bad. (This cultural shift, like smoking, was sudden and probably a result of complex causes, but personally, I credit the character of Carter Heywood in Spin City1).
My wife, being a moral paragon, disapproves of Scouting’s (now changed, I think) anti-gay policy. Also, their long shameful history of covering up sexual abuse. Also, she asks if the Boy Scouts is supposed to teach you map reading skills, why do you get lost driving around town? So, years ago, when she said if we had kids, they wouldn’t be in Scouts, I got it. I didn’t attempt a defense2.
The Boy Scouts may be foundational to who I am, but also, problematic.
You get it, right?
Who doesn’t carry fond memories of a flawed organization in their heart?
Plus, I was hoping for a daughter!3
But now I got two boys and they keep growing and someday we will be living in another country with a different cultural context for the Boy Scouts and word will get out about my history and another dad will ask me if I would like to volunteer and my boys will tell me that they want to whittle sticks with a pocket knife and know how to bandage wounds and splint broken bones and make a stretcher from branches and t-shirts and start a fire without a match and backpack and canoe and night hike by stars and I won’t want to say no.
In the comments, please tell me what in your life you love that you maybe probably shouldn’t?
Can’t Get Much Worse, the story I kicked off for The Great Substack Story Challenge - Two! continues as
writes Chapter 4. I genuinely love all the ways it is mutating beyond my initial conception.Check it out!
Which I watched because I loved Michael J. Fox because I loved Back to the Future I and Back to the Future II and Back to the Future III and Teen Wolf.
Okay, I tried explaining that if we were on a trail in the woods and I had a compass and landmarks, then I could orientate the map and we’d be set. She was unconvinced.
In marriage, it’s often easier to moot a problem than solve it!
I was a scout and to this day carry emotional baggage from that chapter of my life. We had it inscribed in our souls that when the flag was raised we were to stand rock solid at attention and not break rank for anything. Which caused me to wet my pants. I didn't break rank.
We played capture the flag and I came up with the brilliant idea of outflanking the opponents by trekking through the woods and making a run for their flag from the cover of forest. We spent a couple of hours fighting through dense underbrush and when we came out of the woods the flag was no where in sight. The adults were relieved to see us, apparently they had no idea where we were and were getting a bit worried.
Last but not least, on the final night we were treated to a deluge from the heavens and the tents all got soaking wet. We all moved into the camp kitchen which and stayed awake all night because all out sleeping bags were soaking wet. We put on dry clothes if we had them, some needed to dry them beside the camp stove, and made general nuisances of ourselves for the remainder of the night. There was no flag ceremony the next morning as we piled into the big yellow bus for the ride home.
Some sixty years later I look back with amusement at the antics of a bunch of kids in the woods and smile. Some scars are worn with pride.
Michael Jackson.