Last Thursday K1 came home with a sticker on his shirt. See, with the little ones you don't send notes home anymore...those get lost, forgotten, used to blow their nose, something. So this was a sticker reminding parents about the Cub Scout Night at the school at 6:30 that very same evening! (Yay for temporally proximal reminders!) So when Steph got home we decided that K1 and I would go to this thing and check out the local Scout troop.
See, my relationship with Scouting goes back a ways. I started as a Tiger Cub, as the son of an Eagle Scout who had 3 brothers who were also Eagles. My dad was my scoutmaster or assistant scoutmaster for much of the time I can remember, and I don't recall there being much question about whether I would stay involved. I worked my way up through the ranks to Eagle, which I got at 14 (pretty darn young for an Eagle Scout.) Then we left Kansas to move to Colorado and I never got involved again. Band took over my life and I spent my high school years mostly as a music geek.
Since I left, Scouting has been kind of a fond memory as well as something that other people do. I have several uncles currently involved in leading Scouting groups at various levels with their kids, and they all have a great time. So now my stepson wants to do Cub Scouts. This could be really fun and really good for us as a bonding sort of thing. I'm excited that he's interested in this. At the same time though I have my reservations. The Boy Scouts were all over the news a few years back because they had fought for (and won!) the right to exclude any of those Gay folks from their ranks. Also they've never been shy about the Christian and military undertones of the whole experience. So I don't know how I feel about that.
I'm not about to let my personal potential political qualms get in the way of being supportive of K1 and his friends. It's just strange to be conscious of the fact that this very unique experience comes with these lurking undertones of things that I won't always agree with. Which in itself is somewhat silly, because the things I remember most about my own Boy Scout days are the camping and the dirty jokes I pretended to understand and the hiking and the day camps and the kids who were always pushing the rules to see what they could get away with. I'm glad I did it though, and I'm glad my dad was there and willing to support me in my Scouting days. I wouldn't deny K1 that for a second, if this is something he's wanting to try out.
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1 comment:
I had a similar hesitation when my son wanted to joined Scouts. In the news they seemed to be drifting to the right. I was embarassed to tell friends of mine who are gay that my son was in Scouts because I didn't want them to think that I had turned into some kind of nut job. It all seems to have worked out fine, though. My group is made up of pretty normal people from the community that seem to share my values. We just do Scout stuff and the kids have a blast.
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