Scouts with excess energy
Olan Watkins (o.watkins@GENIE.COM)
Sun, 31 Mar 1996 14:59:16 -0600
Thanks to all that have responded with comments or suggestions on the Scout
that posted in a bulletin board about the dirty tricks they were playing on
new Scouts. A couple of people have suggested that this is perhaps more of
an over active imagination, rather than excess energy. I must admit that the
actions described sound almost too bad to think about anything else being
done or that a major stop not being applied.
Thinking about this situation last night and I happened to look at a
calender and noticed the date. Perhaps the joke is on us, it is possible
that the post was intended to be one big April Fool's joke on some of us
grey beards, and I must admit that if that was the purpose, it got the
intended results. I know that I got my chain pulled pretty good.
Back to my story of when I was first an adult Scouter, the tough old
Scoutmaster had all of the Assistant Scoutmasters pull duty as what he
called Fire Watch and guard duty all night long on campouts and camporees.
This was a fairly large Troop with about 100 kids and something like 20
Assistant Scoutmasters. The SPL was somewhat similar to a First Sargent in a
military unit, and had much more actual power than any of the Assistant
Scoutmasters. The SPL would make up a duty roster for the adults as well as
the patrols. When we had a new ASM join the Troop, I am pretty sure that the
Scoutmaster would have the SPL assign the new person the Fire Watch duty
from about 2 AM to 4 AM. At the time, I thought that perhaps this was one of
the Scoutmaster's little tests to see if the new person had the right stuff
<G> to be allowed to be a leader in the Troop. And there were a few that
never made more than the one campout with the Troop.
Any way, at Camporees and things like that, some Troops would have problems
with their tent ropes being cut or stakes pulled, but we never did, and we
never allowed any of our kids to raid any other Troop site.
YIS, Olan Watkins
Terry Howerton Sakima Group, Inc. SCOUTER Magazine Kansas City |
