Joining the pack

Tonight was my first Pack Meeting ever. If you are like me (or rather, like I was three weeks ago), you wouldn’t know a pack meeting from a pep rally. (Having six sisters and three daughters might do that to you.) But watch out, world of Scouting--Here I am—Assistant Den Mother Extraordinaire. Ghastly pale yellow shirt and all.

I am in charge of the Bears, which I now understand to mean extremely energetic nine- and ten-year-old boys who should never be allowed to take off their shoes during any scout gathering. After my bishop gave me this assignment, and after I had picked my jaw up off the floor, Mark’s first words to me (raised eyebrows don’t technically count) were “I’m so jealous.” YEAH RIGHT!!! They were actually “Don’t you dare wear the ugly yellow shirt.” If he had known better he would have said, “Don’t you dare buy that ugly yellow shirt for $40 even though that’s the cheapest you can find one for.”

I wish the BSA would at least give us a complimentary box of girl scout cookies for the purchase of our mandatory yellow shirts. Or maybe I can sell GS cookies to pay for my uniform. And while we’re talking about moolah, I learned tonight that I am allotted twenty-five cents per boy per week for our lesson and treats. According to my calculations, each boy will get 1/3 of one girl scout cookie each week on this budget. It’s gonna be slim pickings, children.

But I digress. It’s just so easy to get carried away in this strange world of BSA. Tonight at the Pack Meeting… (am I using my articles right? Do I need to say ‘the’ in front of Pack Meeting? Do I need to capitalize Pack or Meeting or Denmother/Den Mother?)…the Scoutmaster introduced a series of "Olympic games" for the kids. And tonight the “pack” included my own excited little Sage. She looked like a little waif out there with all those blue-shirt-and-crazy-bandana-clad scouts. But last week when Scouts was at our house, Sage was totally fascinated with them. She sat on the sidelines and piped up whenever she felt brave enough.

The first Olympic game was a physical fitness relay. I admit I couldn’t focus on my bears since I was worried about Sage. She made it through the bear walk just fine, and faked some seriously tragic pushups (involving bum action only), but the crab walk across the entire gymnasium proved too much for her little underexercised legs. She ran to me, with tears running down her face, and through her sobs I could hear “That was not fun. That was too hard.”

I tried to calm Sage down and was eventually able to shoo her back into the line of kids waiting to shoot a Nerf gun at a target. At that moment I was having all kinds of misgivings about my parenting, and about my calling to the scouting program. And suddenly I noticed that one of the older scouts had made his way over to Sage and was talking to her kindly. Then a short scout reached out and patted Sage on the back. And a few minutes later she was talking animatedly about the target made out of a vacuum box with her neighbor.

And then I realized that I need Scouting. I don’t need the pale yellow shirt, but I’m willing to accept it, along with all the lessons my family and I have to learn from this BSA adventure.

Until next time...Be prepared. Or whatever.

Also, I cannot resist slipping this in.

Mark, 1990