Indelible ink

So the little guy became a Boy Scout on Sunday. I've already chronicled some of my conflicted feelings about the program, but on balance, I think that scouting teaches a solid set of values and skills that translate well into adult life. In my personal and apocalyptic view of the future, we will be stripped of our starter castles and forced to survive on our wits and survival skills. So those camping trips and first-aid merit badges will come in handy when we are out in the woods, once again. I think that I will miss hot showers most of all.

My son will at least begin the path to Eagle Scout – who knows whether or not he will persist. To be an adult with the Eagle Scout cred is a nice thing, but when you look at the kids that are getting their Eagles, it's a pretty nerdy group. Sure, the nerds rule in the end, but it's too late for my son. He doesn't have a nerdy bone in his body. I see him as terminally addicted to cool. I rushed out of the front door this morning to give him the lunch bag that he'd left on the counter, and I could read in his eyes that he was mortified that the kids at the bus stop would see this face-losing episode. "Just give me the lunch and move quickly away from me, Dad," the look said.

As I reflect upon my own scouting experience, I most often think of and share with others the great campouts (I was an Air Force brat in Germany then, and the campouts were tremendous), and the fun activities (lashing together signal towers and communicating via semaphore near the Maritime Museum in Newport News, VA). But if I think more deeply and honestly about the experience, I recall (but do not share) the less enjoyable, the more embarrassing, and the sometimes more painful moments of my scouting life.

Number one on that list revisits me periodically. A wince-evoking memory that recurs as a subconscious tool for counteracting my (occasional?) hubris. The scout troop in Germany was a pretty finely tuned machine - I attribute that to the fact that all of the scouts were military brats and all of the leaders were military men. I held the patrol leaders in high esteem, and I found many of the scouts to be "cool." Darshan Karkhi (pronounced car-key) was just so cool, I still want to be like him. Regular troop meetings included everyone, but there were other meetings held in the back room for leadership. I didn't go to many of these, as I was not a leader, but on one occasion, I was sitting at the large table, almost directly across from the Scoutmaster, listening with awe and respect as he went around the table delineating points of import. I see this Rembrandt-esque scene - the room dark at the edges, illuminated from the middle in a yellowish and sepia hue. The Scoutmaster looked directly at me, said my name, and continued "Quit your bitchin'!" I was stunned. Embarrassed. Speechless. To this day, I don't know exactly what I had done to evoke this from my exalted leader, but I knew at that moment, and I know today, that I deserved it. I think that I have complied with that directive innumerable times over these four intervening decades.

I'll be driving along a quiet stretch of road when a similar and equally vivid memory will play from my personal catalog of internal video clips, unbidden from the depths of my psyche, and I will sometimes gasp aloud from the intensity, the destestability, the pain. "What!?" the kids might say. "Nothing. I just thought of something. That's all." That's all, indeed.