On Leading Tiger Scouts

Reagan,

I’m writing this ahead of our Tiger Scout meeting tonight where I will be leading your troop (den? pack?). Couple that with your troop/den/pack president(or leader or I’m new to this so I don’t know what anyone is called) is out sick, so not only will I be leading the class, but I’ll be doing the beginning and end too. I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to hold up some fingers and say something at some point, but we’ll figure it out on the fly.

Part One:

Look, I’m a bit on the fence about Cub Scouts if I’m being honest. There are certainly positives and negatives that come to mind.

Positive: you learn useful things that will make you a more confident kid.

Negative: how long are we going to stay in Cub Scouts?

Positive: you have a community of kids who are smart and more capable than most their age.

Negative: so, like, out by middle school?

Positive: you get to do cool things like learn wilderness survival skills and how to make fire.

Negative: because, like, what is the end goal? We going for a career in Scouts or what? We putting this on our resume out of college because I have some thoughts…

Positive: won’t have to worry about you and your friends drinking in high school.

Negative: won’t have to worry about girlfriends for awhile either.

Here’s the truth. It’s a long arc to get to the point where you can look back and say that doing scouts was cool. Nash’s dad Troy (I think) was an Eagle Scout. I would argue that now, as he approaches his 50th birthday, he’s just getting to that point where he can be proud of his time in the scouts. I think if I met someone at my current age, 39, my time in the scouts would not be one of my “two truths and a lie” statements. If we were playing 18 truths and a lie, it might make the list. And as a side note, Troy IS, in fact, Nash’s dad. That wasn’t the part I wasn’t sure about, rather his final rank in the scouts before his dad kicked him out of the house and told him to “get a job! You’re 35 years old and still wearing that button sash. Time to grow up, son!”

At the end of the day, I want to support you and take a “I like it if you like it” approach (for the most part) to the things you like or want to do. Naturally, if you start rooting for the Packers, we’re going to have a long conversation. We’ll keep an open mind for the scouts and see how the future goes.

Back to tonight — we’re going to be running a skit about the journey of a piece of trash and how it goes from holding your food to either a recycle center, landfill, or compost. I’m sure it’ll be riveting. We’re also making planters using plastic bottles. I’ll follow up with part two once it’s done and recap the highlights and lowlights.

Part Two

As Nash would say, “BIZASTER!”

So meeting started at 5:30p, so we (Reagan and I) get there at 5:15ish to get set up and iron out any wrinkles in the plan. When we go to enter the building, doors are locked. Sam and his dad, Sean, who are helping set up the planters and who made the powerpoint for the meeting, also get there. I enjoyed talking to Sean about Sam’s path in scouts. Sam looks to be in like 6th or 7th grade, and I was just fishing for how involved he is, whether he likes it vs. if it feels like the juice is no longer worth the squeeze, and other general musings.

Time status: On Time

Sam is being a bit quiet and I can tell that is just the kind of kid he is. Meanwhile, you (Reagan) are just kind of being a spazz — you get that way when you’re excited. I think you liked the idea that your dad was going to lead the meeting, and were doing your version of peacocking but it just comes off a bit spazzy. As other parents began to shuffle in with their kids, I was trying to get ahold of whoever I could to get these doors open. Eventually, the number for a janitor was taped to the inside of the door, and he was able to get ahold of the other janitor who was able to let us all in.

Time status: 10 minutes behind

We’re now behind schedule and the janitor kind of treated us like we just stepped on his cat’s tail.

“What time do you think you’ll be done?” he asked as we walked into the cafeteria that we’d requested and had the school sign off on for us to use.

“I think 6:30. But I also think there is a girl scouts meeting after us.”

He kind of took that like we doubled down on stepping on his cat, and began setting up the tables. The cafeteria tables were folded up into a V-shape and have six seats on each side broken in half by the apex of the V. I say that to illustrate that they’re decently big. So I’m trying to figure out how we might project Sam’s slideshow onto the TV’s that are there, while disgruntled Will Hunting is over here just banging tables into place. Meanwhile, Reagan and Co. are just running wild. There is a stage in the cafeteria and a piano behind one of the curtains. One kid is playing heavy metal drums on the piano keys while the others are just sprinting loops in and out of where I can see them. The other parents are just happy to be there and see no need to help corral their kids in anyway.

Time status: 20 minutes behind

I gave up on trying to get the TV going and just decided we’d all gather around my laptop and run the slideshow that way. Being that this was my third time going to a den meeting, I was a little fuzzy on how to get things going, but I assumed we’d do the scouts oath and Pledge of Allegiance before getting to the meat of the meeting.

“Sam, can you help me out with the Oath and the Pledge of Allegiance?”

Sam looks at his dad. I’m thinking, “this kid is trying to be an Eagle Scout or super scout or whatever the top of this mountain is, and he doesn’t know the oath?” His dad comes over and kind of gets it started, and I think Sam fell into place and got through the rest. Meanwhile, the six kids who made it out to the meeting were all holding some variation of 0-3 fingers up and mumbling along.

Next up, the pledge. Pretty much like a happy birthday song, I figured this one would be a bit easier. So, again, Sam gets it started.

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States…”

So far so good. Scout kids still holding up some fingers and some parents are standing and joining in. We’re also using the first google image that showed the American flag because why would a school cafeteria have one somewhere visible? Whatever. We’ll get through this and get to the slideshow, right?

“…of America. And to the….one nation, under God…”

What’s that now? Not trying to throw Sam under the bus, but are we just leaving out the middle of the pledge? Did we change the pledge? I mean, it’s been awhile since I was in school, but I had to figure the pledge didn’t change, did it?

“…indibisidull, with liberty and justice for all.”

The parents all kind of eyeballed each other, but what are you going to do, you know?

OK this post is getting long so I’ll kind of speed through the next part. Sam did his slide show and the scouts had to learn and identify if a resource was reusable or not. We then learned about the 3 R’s of Recycle, Reduce, Reuse. Then it was time for my bit. What I didn’t mention earlier was that I generated the skit from AI. I teased it a bit a few weeks ago, and some of our friends thought it to be a bit racy. It wasn’t, but that was the line we ran with and so when I told them we were doing the skit, they thought it should come with a parental warning label or something.

Again, long story short, it didn’t go as planned. I didn’t know how many kids would be at the meeting, but I made the skit for 10 kids. So there are 10 parts that need to be read. Well, six kids means I now have a part, Sam and his dad have parts, and I have to pull one of the other parents to have the last part. No volunteers, sorry guy closest to me, you’re now a trash can.

The skit went off as well as you would imagine. AI thought it was a good idea to italicize the few parts that required some “acting,” but I don’t think it translated to the performance how it was intended. Had I caught that ahead of time, I would have adjusted. Instead, it went like (and read this very slowly and carefully like a 1st grader would), “I ddddooonnnn’ttttt neeeeeedddd th-th-this platttteeeee annnnyyy……(silence)……annnnnyyyym-m-more. Ttthhhrrrrrooowwwws p-p-p-pl-pl-plate away in trrrrrrash can.”

So whatever. We get through it. We build some planters that Sam brought and at least that part was fine. Having been 20 minutes behind at some point, we finished the oath, pledge, slideshow, skit, and planter making in like 12 minutes so we actually made up all the time we’d lost and were probably in and out with 15 minutes to spare.

This den meeting was a disaster and I’m glad I don’t have to do it again, but I will say, for all the jokes about this den meeting, for the most part, these are really well run and the few things we’ve done outside of the den meetings have been pretty cool. So I’m not knocking Tiger Scouts as much as I am knocking my ability to run one of these meetings. Hopefully next time, Scott the den leader is back and can tighten up the ship. At least he can power through the oath and the pledge better than we all did.

But cheers to us for doing things a little out of our comfort zone. And two cheers for knowing when to lean into something new, and when to abandon ship.

Love,

Dad