Parents who fail the Scouts
Not that anybody would ever ask, but I would be the worst Scout leader in the history of parenting.
For one, I don’t tie knots particularly well. Aside from my shoes, I’m not knotting things often. When I do tie my shoes, I knot them three times over and just force my fat foot into the shoe so I don’t have to tie it again for several months.
I participated in Cub Scouts for a few years as a kid. My car, though it looked cool, finished last in the Pinewood Derby. After a half-day “survival” camp in the middle of the winter, I basically refused to participate in Cub Scouts ever again. My plan for surviving became “Stay away from wilderness,” and I’ve diligently stuck to that plan for at least 30 years.
While my sons don’t currently participate in Boy Scouts, my two daughters each belong to a local troop. They both went to overnight camps this past summer, and, I’m told, they can now do some outdoorsy things like start a campfire and probably something with knots.
Despite our best intentions, my wife and I haven’t actively participated in the girls’ troop activities. For our oldest, we made a big effort to sell Girl Scout cookies in her first year. We asked the neighbors, pressured relatives, etc. It was the first COVID year, so I think we were just bored from doing nothing at home for several months. Because aside from the boxes we purchased for ourselves, we haven’t bothered for either of our daughters the last few years. (We pay membership dues and/or whatever else the troop leader says).
Last year, my oldest daughter couldn’t get into the most “local” troop, and so the one she could get into was a 35-minute drive away. You can take a guess how many regular meetings she attended.
Look, we’re busy! Jobs, school, four kids with multiple activities. I’m sure we’re not the only parents out there who happily drop their kiddos at extracurriculars and leave to do some other errand rather than stick around and participate in the troop activities.
I don’t feel bad about it! Well, most of the time. My youngest daughter’s Girl Scout troop is filled with active, participatory parents. They even seem like friends! None of them know my name, because I leave the building within seconds of dropping her off at the meeting. I gotta go or else someone might ask me to tie a knot!
These troop parents really make me look like a clown. For half of the year, my daughter didn’t wear her Scout vest to the meetings. Because we simply hadn’t bought it. (Technically we bought it after a month, then lost it, but you get the idea). My daughter prefers to manage her own outfits and didn’t really want to wear the “clashing” vest anyway.
In the second half of the year, she wore the vest, but we never got around to stitching on her troop number or all her earned badges. I’m only taking part of the blame on this one because I’m pretty sure my daughter learned how to sew at one of those meetings. I can’t be certain because … well, obviously, I didn’t attend any of these meetings.
This same daughter remains in the same troop this year, and last week they held their bridging ceremony. That means she gets to trade in her brown jacket for a mint green Junior jacket. Get this: We bought the vest and the new badges, and the troop number patches ahead of time … one day before the ceremony.
We knew we weren’t going to stitch these patches on before the meeting, but the patches are all “technically” iron-on, and my wife spent a good, solid hour trying to melt those things onto the vest with an iron (an item I only just discovered that we own). We realized why everyone else in the troop decided to sew the “iron-on” patches instead.
I took her to the bridging ceremony, and she proudly wore her new vest with the troop numbers and a single corner of the patches desperately clinging to the cloth of the toothpaste-colored vest. I note the color because it’s a striking color, so you notice when your kids’ patches appear far more haphazard than the other kids.
I attended the ENTIRE meeting and bridging ceremony. All the other parents kept referring to the parents as the “mothers,” which made me and this other dad there feel like we probably should’ve opted out of the activity.
To credit the troop leader, she frequently tells me nice things about my daughter and tells me it’s OK that my wife and I don’t hang around every meeting like some of the other parents. I tell her we’ll pay whatever we need for membership dues or to offset our lack of cookie sales, and it seems fine. Frankly, I’m probably her favorite Scout parent because I’m not up in her business every single meeting (perhaps wishful thinking).
What’s most important is that my daughters enjoy their Scout experience and that they have some things outside our family unit to enjoy with friends and classmates. During the entire bridging ceremony and meeting, my daughter barely even looked at me because she was so busy playing and socializing and probably tying knots. I don’t know. If you need me, I’ll be in the car sitting with the heater/air conditioner blasting while I glance at my phone-sized supercomputer. There’s an app for tying knots, I bet.
•••
Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer, full-time student and parent to four kids, ages 7-13. He is tired. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.
