At some point during my youth, seemingly everyone I knew at school had recently become a member of the Boy Scouts. Maybe it was the Cub Scouts? Oh, who the hell knows? The point is that everyone was doing something I wasn’t. And I’m a follower not a leader, so I immediately went home and requested to my parents that I become a member of this valiant organization.
After much discussion between my parents, my Dad said that he would find out when the next meeting was so that both my brother and I could get signed up.
A few weeks later was the day I had been awaiting so anxiously, it was the day I would become a Boy Scout! My brother and I were so excited, we could barely control ourselves.
Our Dad drove us over to the local Boy Scout meeting place in his sweet Taurus wagon. As we rode in the car we talked about how from today on we’d be able to tie very fancy knots at a moments notice and use nothing but a stick and some twine to light our Marlboros.
We arrived at a hall filled with Boy Scouts decked out in shirts covered with patches and rather odd looking ties. Funny, I didn’t remember anyone saying anything about neckerchiefs? Soon the festivities started with the pledge of allegiance and some Scout formalities that we didn’t quite understand at the time.
Soon a Master Scout got up front and began talking about the state of the troop, including recent trips. “Those sound like fun”, I thought. Eventually he started rambling about all of these boring things everyone needed to do to make sure the troop met yearly goals for recruits and raising money. On and on he went for over an hour. Every breath he took to speak was one less I wanted to breath. Eventually his spiel ended by him saying that they were going to have a little break for the bathroom and refreshments, but after that new troop members would be introduced and welcomed.
Finally, we were up next.
As my brother and I got up to grab some snacks, we walked by a couple of kids showing off their nifty little Boy Scout pocket knives. We were both very impressed and realized that wearing the neckerchief was simply a trade-off for being able to continuously carry a weapon with you. But my Dad noticed that we noticed, so he ever so gently ushered us over to some doors by the front of the hall.
He leaned over and said, “I saw you guys looking at those kid’s pocket knives. I want you both to realize that those are not toys, so they’re not to be played with.”
We both shook our heads in understanding, but with smiles on our faces knowing we were soon going to have our very own knives.
Coming down to one knee, my Dad looked in our eyes, “If we leave here right now and you promise me you never bring up the Boy Scouts again, I’ll buy each of you a pocket knife that’s even better than the ones those kids had. Deal?”
And that ladies and gentlemen was my entire time in the Boy Scouts. This is also the first time I’ve mentioned the Boy Scouts since that day. I hope my Dad doesn’t take my knife away.
Tagged with: boy scouts • bsoa • scout master
August 3rd, 2009 at 5:00 pm
When I went to my first Scout’s meeting, I did not see a pocket knife being played with. No wonder I did not join. I do wished I joined now. My younger brother joined. I was jealous of him going to all the adventure trips and becoming rather handy.