Soaring with the Eagles

I got an Email a couple of months ago inviting me to a reunion of all the guys from my old scout troop--they were getting together the ones who had earned Eagle Scout, the highest award you can get. It turns out that there have been over 200 Eagle Scouts from the troop that I belonged to as a kid--the troop is now 30 years old, and I was around and knew some of the founding members, so I felt that it was a pretty significant thing. In looking at the list, I was Eagle Scout #12 or so, so the fact that there were 200 guys that came after me was also intriguing. Over the years, I have lost touch with everyone I knew from those days. In fact, I get out my old patches every once in a while for Ryan to look at, but overall, I've just lost touch with scouts and scouting.

My reason for not getting continuing to embrace scouting is very simple, and probably offensive to some: Women and their increased involvement in the program. Somehow, they kicked their way into scouting and changed the landscape--there seems to be very heavy female involvement in Scouting now, and I'm not sure it is for the better. About a year ago, when my brother was putting together a hike for our family, I went to a scout meeting to get some hiking trail information. I walked into the lobby of the meeting room and was eyed venomously by three cud-chewing cows with greater hate in their eyes than a vengeful Grendel's mother--in full Boy Scout regalia, no less. It was really creepy. During the meeting, the shrill shrieking of women's voices wrapped around my skull and pierced my spine, kinda like "Predator" monster ripping my vertabrae out. It was absolutely unbearable and I started to feel dizzy. I felt like I was regressing and had the urge to go home and mow the yard and mop the kitchen before dad came home.

Some people probably call it "good old day" syndrome--and I have to tell you that it was pretty unfair to guys who didn't have a dad at home that they didn't have an adult who could participate with them in the program, but scouting was a place where you could go camping and hang out and do stuff without someone really caring if you are wearing clean socks--in fact, nobody really cared if you wore clothes at all. The men running the place only got involved if they thought you were going to wind up in the hospital...or morgue--if they didn't intervene.

I picked up Time magazine the other day and there was a commentary on gay adoption and parenting. It was by Dr. James Dobson, who is more socially conservative than the prophet Ezekiel. So, it wasn't shocking that the argument was a case against gay anything. Not surprising, because the tone of the conservative branch of this nation seems to be "if you're gay, we aren't going to reward it in any way whatsoever--you aren't allowed to have fun in the same way that straight people can." Without getting too far into condemning or approving of the lifestyle, suffice it to say that I'm not in a position to be judgemental about anyone else's life (doesn't always stop me).

The surprising thing about the article in Time was that it makes a pretty good argument on why kids need a dad--it rang a bell. Here's what it said: "Fathers don't 'Mother'".

When I read that, I thought, "Yeah, that's really it." It reminded me of a (minor) constant issue between Fran and me about the kids--probably more Ryan than Kaitlyn at this point. She unapologetically supports him and reassures him, and I sometimes allow him to endure a little (and even administer) "trial by fire." It's probably easier to see from a distance, but I would rather him learn tough lessons about procrastinating and missing out on opportunities when it's around the house than when he's 20 and in college, or about not paying attention to things and ruining a $10 model than a $10,000 car. Sometimes Fran can't stand to see him fail or get discouraged, but I think that it's a part of learning. She sometimes insinuates that it is a little cruel to let him fail. For now, I can be there to pick him up, comfort him, and build him back up, as well as point out the lesson to be learned. I've seen the product of over-parenting and those horrid kids with a glorified sense of entitlement seem to make horrid adults with the same odious attitude.

Back to the Eagle Scout reunion. I went, and it was kind of neat. There were lots of guys from the "old days", including one guy who lived three doors down from our house when we were growing up--I always had looked up to him, because he was three years older. Time was a great, equalizer, though, because he was a completely bald, nerdy guy with a high-pitched whiny voice like a cartoon character and a very disconnected conversation style. There was another really weird experience--I mentioned to one of the guys that I saw his mother at the car wash the other day, and we figured out that she had died suddenly within days of my seeing her. I could tell that it really had shaken him up that I had seen her.

But the thing that really struck me was that, during my time in the troop, we went ten years and only had twenty Eagle scouts. It was really a badge of honor and represented an accomplishment--lots of learning, independent study, and a relatively complex work project that the guy had to design, plan, and organize. In 2006, the troop graduated twenty Eagles scouts! The youngest one was born in 1991 (which was when I bought my last pair of hiking boots)!

During the weekend, it came out that the women in leadership in the troup had formed a committee to push the boys through the program to successfully accomplish their Eagle Scout award. Once they got within a certain distance of the endpoint, these women would badger them about getting their requirements completed, their project planned, their paperwork filed, and drive the whole process. One of the women got up and told a story about one of the guys who was just going t blow off getting his award, and she arranged for him to have a special meeting, and helped him organize his paperwork and get his stuff together--she didn't mention if she wiped his butt and/or nose before the meeting. It really bugged me, and then I backlashed and got mad at myself for being so sexist--why don't I just start up a "he-man woman-hater's club"?

But there is a certain "get up off your ass and do it" quality that these guys should have in order to be highly commended and recognized for perhaps their whole life, and it seemed, sadly, like they weren't left alone to discover that trait in themselves. The award is not the end in mind--the process of accomplishing things on your own is the intention of the program. The "mothering" instinct is a strong one, though--these women see the shame and failure of not accomplishing something that is set out for, and they can't trust their boys to their own devices.

This seemed obvious to me in the slight generational gap which existed in the group--at one point, where there stopped being 3 or 4 representatives of a "class year" and started being 12 or 13, it was rare to see a true stand-out guy.

My humble opinion.