Practice makes "be prepared"

[mrkstvns]

It's always a good idea to practice a skill and make sure you can do it before it comes time to put it to the test.  Work out the kinks before training other scouts. Do a dry run of an event...don't wait until it's too late to find out you're not prepared.

Came across this interesting Scoutmaster Minuted on the retired scoutmaster web site....

Practice it First

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I recently saw a program on TV about President Harry Truman and one event stuck in my mind. When he first ran for office in the early 1920s - it was for something like County Board - some of his army buddies thought it would be impressive for him to arrive for a speech by airplane. Now, this was in the early days of flying and a lot of people had never even seen a plane, much less flown in one. He agreed and at the appointed time the small plane circled the fairgrounds and landed. The candidate got out of the plane, sort of staggered across the field, leaned over a fence, and threw up. This was not the impressive entrance he had planned. But Mr. Truman learned something from this experience. Sometimes ideas that sound good don't work out well when you go to try them. So it's a good idea not to do it for the first time in front of a crowd. Practice it through first to see if this idea is really going to work as well as it sounds or are there some bugs to be worked out.