The Badgers

On her blog, my sister-in-law bemoaned how the monthly scouting overnighter is causing her some grief. Despite her “blog complaining,” she has a good attitude. I was YM president for almost two years and the time away was always hard – on me and the family. At least I got to be with the boys and could see the reason for the sacrifice. Kara had to make that sacrifice without that benefit. What I really resented were the endless, mandatory training meetings on Saturday mornings. I mean, I know training is important especially youth protection, but our Stake seemed to have a knack for cramming 30 minutes of training into a four hour block. They divided us into Patrols and had us come up with a patrol motto and chant. OK, I know, training, but seriously, we’re not really the “Badgers” and we don’t really need to spend time crafting a patrol neckerchief and color scheme, do we? Brother Stubble from the fake Owl patrol is really getting into the Hoot, maybe a little too much. OK, I get it, this is part of training but at some point it crossed the line for me into “trying-to-re-live-the-good-old-days.” Brother Stodgy whips out his pocketknife and starts in on his nails, and Brother Powell is actually wearing green socks with red flaggy things. The conversation includes grumbling about kids nowadays, never be another trip like the High Adventure of ’68 where they hiked 200 miles and survived on tree bark alone, and gas stoves are for mama’s boys. It was akin to spending four hours with Mike Wood, Dar Henrie, and Mike Dickerson all trying to “one-up” each other.