Fat Old Guy

But Dave, dear Lad. There are no Parents there. No parents at camp? What you talking about, Willis? No adult supervision other than the camp staff?

I'll go into the Wayback Machine and say that we should maybe make 11 the starting age for Scouts (no more of this 10.5 with AOL) or even make it 12 (like it was long ago) What I've observed with the 10.5 and 11 year old Scouts is that mom and dad seem to do too much work for them and they wander about in a daze. With that extra year, they're ready to do things for themselves.

At present I see as many Scouts wearing Blue Jeans as I do uniform pants. We can complain about the quality of the uniform pants but the biggest problem is the adults, both the leaders and the parents. How many leaders do we see wearing everything but green pants. Any green pants, not just official BSA? Out of the 25 or so registered adults, only six wear green pants. I see khakis, blue jeans, sweats, yada, yada, yada. So with the leaders setting a bad example, the parents see no reason to pay $30 for a pair of BSA pants. For some reason, spending $75 for a soccer uniform is okay but $50 for a Scout uniform isn't. I'd be happy if they'd go to Old Navy and buy a pair of olive twill pants.

"Trained" patches, "Quality Unit" patches, square knots I wear them all. For a long time I didn't wear my "trained" patches because I feel that if I'm going to do a job, I'm going to be trained. I finally started wearing them because I got tired of people saying to me, "You know, you really ought to go to training". Very ironic considering that I'm one of the biggest cheerleaders for training. What irks me are the people who don't take the time to find out where they need to put their patches. I've seen every imaginable patch in every imaginable place. BTW, I have a campaign hat and I wear it about once a month. I rotate my campaign hat, expedition hat and beret. The funny thing is that when I wear my campaign hat, new comers assume that I'm in charge.

Now that I'm done ranting and being rude to people, I'll get back to the issue at hand. Forget the Swiss Army knives unless they have a locking blade. As a Boatswain's Mate told me about 30 years ago, "a pocketknife is no good unless the blade locks. If it don't lock it's going to close on your fingers." As for the weight thing, that's hogwash. I can't find my current Buck catalog but I know that the Buck 110 folding knife is heavier than most of their sheath knifes. A good sheath knife is a great and useful tool, especially in an emergency. You can cut saplings to make an emergency shelter with a sheath knife. You can dig a hole with a sheath knife. You can pry rocks with a good sheath knife. No Swiss Army knife will stand up to the abuse and even good locking knives won't. The real reason that sheath knives have fallen into official disfavor is that the public and especially moms don't like them. Knives, like guns and good cigars have become icons of evil in today's society. "What!" cries the soccer mom, "let my son carry an evil knife? Well, maybe a cute little but nearly useless Swiss Army knife because he can use it to clean his fingernails." We have the added problem that knives are novelties because the boys don't carry them on a regular basis. Like wearing a tuxedo or driving a car, you need to carry a knife on a regular basis for quite a while before it becomes "matter of course." As it stands now, the knives are attractive nusiances which makes the boys want to flip them out and play with them when they shouldn't. Sheath knives would make matters worse and we'd see Scouts playing Erol Flynn vs. Basil Rathbone with their Bowie knives.

But it will be a problem and eventually someone will 'call' him on it...and 'the highway' it will be. I support the SM in this regard. He wants to do things the Scouting way and is being fought at every turn. He wants to stress the importance of the uniform and parents are complaining, "if he makes Bobby wear a uniform, Bobby will just quit." To me the dictatorial approach indicates weak interpersonal skills, perhaps insecurity or lack of confidence in his stated position, or perhaps a bullying approach to people in general, compensating for his shortcomings. Ah, the psychology degreee from Redbook magazine. Is this how you deal with your son when you say, "Clean your room or you can't go out." Do you listen carefully has he rants about the injustices of life and how unfair it is that you expect to defeat the entropy in his room. If a person has a thought that is important to them, it is important for a leader to listen and understand. Sometimes that person has a very good thought. Most of the time, the person wants special treatment. "I don't understand why you say that Jimmy hasn't been active. He wants to come to the meetings and go camping but it interferes with Soccer and his coach won't let him miss practice and this is just Scouts after all." When I was a young man, I umpired baseball. We had a term for coaches and parents who always had something to say. We called them "howler monkeys." The rules applied to everyone but their kids and they always knew better. What they had to say may have been important to them but it certainly wasn't to me or my brothers. (This message has been edited by Al Lundy)

"...say the word and I'll quit..."? I see eye-to-eye with my SM but others don't. He's said, on more than one occasion, "You people sought me out and asked me to take this job. If you don't like what I'm doing, one of us can quit." I see his point because he wasn't an ASM or even on the Committee last year. The Committee said, "Hey, would you be the SM" so he went to training, bought a bunch of uniforms and threw himself into the job. Unfortunately, the last SM didn't give a hoot about anything and parents and kids got used to the lax attitude.

Many years ago, the Scout uniform was a good outdoor uniform made of heavy cotton (don't give the anti-cotton speel), it was rugged and lasted. You could wear it hiking, you could wear it to church. Sure, it needed to be ironed but moms did ironing back then. Consider also that back in the early 20th century and before, the average soldier didn't have a battle uniform, dress uniform, undress uniform, etc. They had one wool suit and that's what they wore.

An Old Grey Eagle said: I wouldnt mind if they brought back the campiagn hats though, they were spiffy. What do you mean "Bring back." The Smokey hat never went away. Not long ago I found a troop web site for a unit in which everyone wears a campaign hat. Of course, they don't buy the expensive BSA hat but who would buy an $80 hat for a kid anyway? Don't worry about tearing up the field uniform by wearing it in the field. No long ago I was told by the manage of our Scout Shop that the lifetime guarantee included rips and tears.