8 October 2008
BSA: Picnic and Learn
Posted by admin under: meetings .
Our Boy Scout troop meeting last night was kind of typical, but a little hectic for the Scoutmaster which is just as well for me and the SPL who was able to do what he wanted to do. His ASPL is one of two individuals tasked with planning our Picnic and Fall Court of Honor that’s happening this Sunday. They’ve decided to throw us a twist. Our usual modus operandi has been for each family to bring their own food, eat, then wander around to talk to others (or huddle with their family fearfully peering at a bunch of strangers), before the kids get started with their games. This year the families will have the option of contributing $2 for a grilled item (probably hot dog or hamburger). I think I’m going to take advantage of the grill that we’ll have at the park pavilion (this thing is huge and built for groups in the hundreds) and I’ll cook something like pollo asada for my family. It will be nice to have something right off the grill.
We’ve usually given door prizes, soda, water, and candy as an enticement to get all the kids and parents to show up since this is our biggest court of honor of the year. The others have merit badges and rank advancement, but nothing on the scale of what the guys accomplish over the summer with a camp that is driving them to earn more and more. So, this is the big deal. No candy this time, though. The ASPL got tired of kids wired on candy behaving badly so it was cut. Aw.
The other item on the troop meeting agenda was teaching the guys how to do menu planning. I’ve been annoyed at being faced with pop tarts as my Sunday breakfast with some waterlogged apples in the ice chest as the shadow of an indication that the meal is “balanced”. I recently retyped the troop guidelines and read about the SPL having to sign off the menu of each patrol. What a great idea! A little quality control won’t kill anyone.
Unfortunately, my son, who is a wonderful young man, didn’t prepare as well as he could have for this discussion. It was all good information that should be heeded by everyone, but it was also all talk, talk, talk. There was no hardcopy of the information which is my general way of getting out of having to say a bunch of stuff. I talk too much as it is so if I can find a way to avoid verbalizing I jump on it. Handouts of the information you want to impart is invaluable for this. You can cover the subject on a general level and direct others to find details in the handouts. It also gives you more time for questions which always reveal stuff you hadn’t figured on talking about or documenting. I’ll have to work with my boy on getting him to provide these in the future so that the kids have a reference for the things they’ve forgotten and also as a way of avoiding all the yakkety-yak that had the other boys so glazed I finally called a TKO and sent them outside to play.
I think the care my SPL son took in setting up an obstacle course before the meeting gave him back any reputation he might have lost as a professor. We did have to watch out for the guys getting a little too high-spirited. Purposefully tripping another boy isn’t Scout-like and there were a few push-ups the boys did that gave them time to reflect on this lesson. I like the summer camp staff’s name for corrective instruction. It’s not punishment. It’s mandatory fun.
So, the Advancement Chair and the Scoutmaster were fending off the hordes regarding badges, patches, and rank advancement while I got to observe the actual meeting. It was my non-mandatory fun.
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- Digital Boy Scout Handbook
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- Cubs: Tigers are Easily Amused
