Cub Scouts

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John’s elementary school years – the early 1990s:


During Cub Scout Pack meetings the kids sat quietly in their seats throughout the evening’s brief program. Well mostly, kind of, sort of, occasionally, intermittently, just barely, hardly at all. That changed abruptly at the close of the meeting when the leaders asked everyone to help fold-up the tables and chairs and put them away. As soon as the meeting was adjourned, and the parents and older boys began working on the tables and chairs, the younger boys began running and screaming around the room spreading chaos in their wake. It was the moment I despised in the evening’s events.

What also lit my fuse was the rush of some dads for the door to escape their obligation to help. It wasn’t the finest exhibition of scout-like behavior for their minor minions. As much as I tried to imagine a worthy excuse for shirking their duty, I usually failed and burned angrily. It was presumptuous of them to assume that their time was more valuable than mine. What kind of rationale could they possibly give their sons on the drive home from the scout meeting for abandoning their friends? They were miserable examples of proper behavior for their children. Maybe their kids learned best by setting a bad example? Don’t grow up to be like me? Do as I say, not as I do?

John recently reminded me of a Pack meeting held back in the day when screaming kids were running all over the place, and John was helping me put away tables and chairs. I stopped for a moment to speak to another dad and John stayed by my side. No doubt John had the same inclination to run around the room screaming like the other juveniles, but by this time he’d acquired sufficient discipline in his life (instilled or inflicted?) that he knew to restrain himself or suffer my wrath, mild as it was. It was during this brief moment amidst the screaming juveniles, did I mention the screaming (?), that one of the little rodents came running by and grabbed John’s hat. I barked to John, “DON’T MOVE!”

Certainly you will recall the great delight kids get out of stealing each other’s hat and running madly about in an impromptu game of keep-away. The theft of the hat immediately angers the victim, and the perpetrator derives some deviant pleasure in further infuriating the owner by playing keep-away. The game usually ends in violence. It would be nice if the offender was the sole recipient of the violence, but all too often both parties end up harmed at the end of the “game”. Knowing all this, I told John not to move, and that if he didn’t do anything his hat would eventually come back to him in just a few minutes time.

The rodent ran around the room and eventually looked back to find that John was not angrily chasing him. He was confused. He then ran past us several times waving the hat in John’s face, no doubt with infantile teasing remarks like, “I got your ha-at”, hoping to incite the mad dog reflex that lives in all of us, but John didn’t bite. John didn’t chase, he didn’t grab for the hat; he just stood there while I resumed my conversation.

It didn’t take long before the rodent realized that he wasn’t having any fun playing this “game” by himself, and actually looked rather ridiculous running away from someone who was NOT chasing him. He eventually gave up, walked up to John and said, “Here’s your hat, John”, and held it out. John accepted his hat back, and soon thereafter we resumed our work.

Every now and then things work out the way they are supposed to.