Idiot Scoutmasters: I'm The Idiot Scoutmaster!

I've had this Idiot Scoutmaster series going for quite a while now.  When you spend over a decade in the Boys Scouts you are bound to come up with a few head-scratching moments from your adult leaders.  However, I got to thinking.  Yes, I know it's a dangerous thing to do.  But I looked at it from the other end.

I was an Assistant Scoutmaster for two years.  Was I perfect?  The definite answer is a resounding, "No."  So this story is about the time I was the Idiot Scoutmaster.  Yes, I am admitting that even I screw up.

When I became an Assistant Scoutmaster for Troop 180 out of Lutz, Fl. there had been a shift in youth members.  They had lost a lot of  boys to turning sixteen.  I know you are thinking, "But aren't the boys allowed to be youth members until their eighteenth birthday?"  Yes.  That is true.

But when they turn sixteen they start driving, and become more interested in girls than Scouting.
I heard one of my own Scoutmasters say, "We've got to get these boys to Eagle by fifteen, or else they'll never get it."  ("It" being Eagle.)  Again, the subjects of girls and cars were brought up.

So Troop 180 was in the middle of a member shift.  It mostly consisted of Scouts that were one to two years removed from Webelos.  So they were quite young and inexperienced.  I remember the first campout that I somehow ended up being in charge of for the first hour.  I was running ragged answering question after question.  They were coming at me like a machine gun.

That was one of my stronger moments.  But like I said earlier, I've had my Idiot Scoutmaster moments.  It all started with two of the Scouts doing something extremely stupid.  I can't remember what.  But I was giving them unholy hell for doing it.

That's when I said/yelled, "You're acting like a bunch of God Damned twelve year olds!"  Yeah, not one of my better moments.  It was then that one of the Scouts said back to me, "But I'm ten!"  I didn't quite know what to say to that.

So I calmed down a bit, and thought about the situation.  I realized I was dealing with not just kids, but ten year old kids.  They were inexperienced, and when it came to communicating with youth so was I.  So I learned something new that day.

I screwed up a bit, but I tried to be a better Scoutmaster because I now knew what I was working with.  Also, the Scouts quit doing whatever dumb thing I yelled at them for.  So they learned a bit as well.

Does this mean I'm going to quit posting, "Idiot Scoutmaster" stories?  Hell no.  I'm sitting on a goldmine of stupidity stories.  I can't let that go.  But look at this way.  The Scoutmasters who were idiots will have stories told about them, and those who weren't will not.

For further reading, here is my Idiot Scoutmaster collection:

Bored Scoutmasters and the Tale of the Wampus

https://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2014/07/bored-scoutmasters-and-tale-of-wampus.html

Idiot Scoutmasters: A True Story of a Scout's Canteen

https://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2018/09/idiot-scoutmasters-true-story-of-scouts.html

Idiot Scoutmasters: Once Bitten, Forever Stupid

https://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2019/01/idiot-scoutmasters-once-bitten-forever.html

Idiot Scoutmasters: The Dishwashing Paradox

https://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2019/02/idiot-scoutmasters-dishwashing-paradox.html

Idiot Scoutmasters: The Idiot Committee

https://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2019/12/idiot-scoutmasters-idiot-committee.html

Here's a post that goes back over a decade.  This was posted on my old Myspace Blog.

Adrian reminisces about his childhood days with the Boy Scouts

https://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2011/02/adrian-reminisces-about-his-childhood.html

Idiot Scoutmasters: The Dishwashing Paradox

This post is a continuation of my "Idiot Scoutmaster" series.  I spent a long time in the Boy Scouts of America, and dealt with a lot of idiot Scoutmasters.  Admittedly, they were volunteers and not professionals, but I still question a lot of their so-called logic to this day.

The Boy Scouts of America have a certain way to wash dishes.  It's actually a very good method.  Basically it goes like this.  You have three tubs.

The first tub is the hot water and soap tub.  This is not really any different than washing dishes at home.  You have hot water, soap, and a brush/rag.  Again, just like washing dishes at home.

The second tub is a cold water and bleach solution tub.  This is known as the cold rinse pot/tub.  So just in case the hot water and soap wasn't enough the bleach in the second tub will kill everything.

This leads to the third tub.  This is just hot water for rinsing.  Hence the name, rinse pot/tub.  The clear hot water will clean off any bleach that is remaining.  After that, hand dry and put away the dishes.  Easy right?

Well my Scoutmaster Mr. Brasher had other ideas about dishwashing.  We only used two pots since that's all that would fit on the Coleman stove.  But Mr. Brasher had a secret to dishwashing.  Let it be known that I am quoting him exactly.

"You want the dish water to be so hot that you can't touch it three times."

This, of course, lead me to the thought, "Well, how can I wash the dishes if I can't actually touch them?"  And when I say he wanted the water hot I mean like this.

I honestly saw him do this weird quick move with his finger three times in the hot water.  He would then say, it wasn't hot enough.  I looked at him like the idiot he was.  He had what looked like a trigger-finger move for quickly touching the hot water three times quickly.  He kept doing it about every minute until his finger was burned enough that he couldn't stick it back in the water.

Seriously, it hurts to even remember this.  I know what you're thinking, "Well Boy Scout, why didn't you let the dishes soak for ten minutes before you attempted to wash them?"  I have an answer you might not have thought about.

You see, I am in Florida.  I've put a thermometer in the sun during the Florida summertime.  It hit 130 degrees F. in the sun.  So think about this.  Boiling water is 212 F.  The temperature in Florida is 95 F. in the shade, and 130 F. in the sun.  So just how long will it take for the temperature of a boiling pot of water to come down to manageable levels?

Let me tell you the answer.  It doesn't.  It doesn't come down to manageable levels.  No matter how long you wait it will still burn your hands.

Since the first pot is so blasted hot Mr. Brasher figured we didn't need a second bleach tub.  So the dishes would go from the first pot (boiling water and soap), to a second pot that was just... you guessed it... more boiling water.

I'll admit, the dishes were clean, but it took us Scouts an hour to wash dishes.  And remember, we'd have to do this three times a day.  Honestly, we spent most of our time just cooking and then washing dishes on campouts.  Literally six hours a day was devoted to just cooking and washing dishes.

Now maybe that's not a bad thing.  I do cook well, and I've never had complaints about my dish washing.  So I do have to thank Scouting for that.  But I will say this.  When I wash dishes I make sure NOT to use boiling water.  Hot?  Yes.  Boiling?  No.

For more of my interesting Scouting stories follow these links:

Idiot Scoutmasters: Once Bitten, Forever Stupid

Idiot Scoutmasters: A True Story of a Scout's Canteen

Bored Scoutmasters and the Tale of the Wampus

Adrian reminisces about his childhood days with the Boy Scouts

Idiot Scoutmasters: A True Story of a Scout's Canteen

I have written of my time in the Boy Scouts of America before.  (See the links at the bottom of the page.)  As I look back, I have more angry/disappointed memories than I do good ones.  This does make for great stories on my blog, but remember,  I had to live these moments.  I have held off writing a lot of my bad memories on this blog, well, for as long as I've been writing this blog.  (Roughly 10 years now.)

This memory I have is so ridiculous that I think it's time to share it.  In fact, this may be the first of these memories I may be writing about for the next few months or years.  I don't know.  What I do know, is that, sometimes Scoutmasters make mistakes.  What I hope is that they learn from them.  I don't know if mine ever would.

I graduated from my Webelo's pack to Troop 12 when I was just ten years old.  I was younger than everyone else.  It made it tough to be taken seriously by other scouts much less get along with them.  The original Scoutmaster was Mr. Moore.  He was a bit goofy, quick tongued, and got along great with the boys.  This did not sit well with the some of the committee members, parents, and other adults.

I could see how he could rub people the wrong way, but I believe he put the boys needs and wants first.  He was asked to step down as Scoutmaster.  He refused and was fired because of it.  All the other adults/Assistant Scoutmasters had a talk with us boys.  They asked us not to quit scouting, and to give the new Scoutmaster a chance.  Some boys quit due to their disgust over the whole matter.  At the time the troop had over forty members, something I've never seen in any other Scout troop, then or since.

Mr. Cooper took over as Scoutmaster for the next six months.  He did it as long as he was able, but his job took a lot of his time.  I always got along well with Mr. Cooper.  He stepped down, and went back to being an Assistant Scoutmaster within the troop.

That was when Mr. John R. (Bob) Brasher took over as Scoutmaster.  He took the troop in unseen directions.  I was roughly twelve years old when this happened.  The first thing that happened was, he really took over.  As in, the boys no longer planed what we were doing.  He took hard control of the reins.

The first thing that was decided with no input of the boys was that Troop 12, (of Lutz, Fl.) was to become a backpacking troop.  That's when a lot of boys quit.  They wanted to be in the BSA.  They didn't want to be involved in the Bataan Death March through Florida during the summers.  And remember, it's summer in Florida nine months out of the year.

The thing I remember most about Mr. Brasher was he ability to talk out of both sides of his mouth at the same time.  He once said that, "The Boy Scouts are not a military organization."  But he also said, "We might have to teach these boys some (military) steps."

If you've ever seen Dr. Phil McGraw (Oprah's friend) spout off some nonsensical country saying, well, Mr. Brasher was the king of that.  You have to remember that I was 10-13 years old while I was in Troop 12.  I wasn't that mature for my age, and I had no idea what he was talking about half the time.

My Dad never wanted to talk bad about other adults in charge.  He didn't want to undermine their credibility/authority.  There was one incident that just made us ask what the cold hell Mr. Brasher was thinking.  It was kind of the beginning of the end as far as me having any respect for Mr. Brasher as a Scoutmaster.

The Troop was on one of its death hikes.  Again, you have to remember was summer is like in Florida.  It's 95 degrees during the day, and only drops to 85 degrees at night.  We were all carrying heavy backpacks.  Remember I was only twelve years old, and carrying a 35 pound backpack.  A lot of that weight was carrying water.  I personally carried six quarts of water when I would start backpacking.  I had two, 2 quart "wine sacks," and two plastic, 1 quart bottles.

Here's what a quart of water looks like:

When we were backpacking we would hike for one hour and rest for ten minutes.  It was during one of the breaks that Mr. Brasher flat told me I should only drink this much water from my canteen.

This is what I actually drank:

Now imagine you have been gardening, landscaping, or mowing the lawn.  If you've been out doing that for a few hours how much water would you drink?  Also, imagine you are doing that in August in the beautiful state of Florida?  Yeah.

Nowadays, outside activities are all about hydration.  Heck, now they make kids drink before activities.  Maybe that's going overboard if you are up in Canada, but when it's 95 degrees out in the woods of Florida, it's not a bad idea.  Heck, there have been times when I'm doing lawn work out here, and I'm sweating as fast as I drinking water.  I'm not being funny.  I really have done that.  

A couple of blogs ago I wrote about working on the travel trailer.  It was so hot that I ended up drinking an entire gallon of water in six hours.  Once I had showered and cleaned up, I started drinking even more.  The reality was I had actually sweated that much out.  

So when Mr. Brasher told me that I was drinking too much water I honestly thought he was completely full of shit.  But more on that later.  He actually had the audacity to walk up to my Father (days later, after the hike) and tell him, "Adrian drinks too much water."  My Dad told him, "You all are out there backpacking in this weather and you're telling him to eat beef jerky and trail mix?  And you wonder why he's thirsty?  Mr. Brasher didn't have much to say to that.  

 

But here lies a problem in backpacking that I was never told.  I didn't actually find this out until later.  Do you know what happens to a person when the following things occur?

1.  Hard work (as in backpacking?)

2.  Not taking enough water in that leads to dehydration?  

3.  Eating salty dehydrated foods?

4.  Pre-teen boys not wanting to drop a deuce in the woods?

5.  Extremely high outdoor temperatures?

I'm going to leave this WebMD link right here, okay?

https://www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/what-is-fecal-impaction#1

I know folks may think that today's helicopter parents and coaches might be babying their youth, but look at what a lot of us had to deal with as kids.  Doctors say something that I wish a lot of people would pay attention to.  

They say the body has a natural system for telling a person that they need water.  It's called thirst.  If you feel thirsty, you should drink water.  It's that simple.  It's not like Mr. Brasher said, "You should only drink "this" much water."  No!  If a person is thirsty there's a reason why.  It's your body telling you to put some water in it now.  

Again, that was the beginning of the end for me with Troop 12.  I don't know if I could even call it Troop 12 by that point.  It was Mr. Brasher's Troop by that time.  I ended up getting kicked out of Troop 12 about a year later.  But that's a story for another time.  For now, I leave you with this advice.  Stay hydrated.  

And here are the links I promised earlier.

Adrian reminisces about his childhood days with the Boy Scouts 

Bored Scoutmasters and the Tale of the Wampus

Bored Scoutmasters and the Tale of the Wampus

As I have written before, I was a member of the Boy Scouts of America for roughly 12 1/2 years.  That's counting the years I was a Cub Scout, Webelo, Boy Scout, Assistant Scoutmaster, and employee at Philmont Scout Ranch.  So when I write about my time with the BSA, I can remember it anywhere from being an eight year old kid to an adult leader.

The BSA like any organization is going to get it's good and bad people, whether they are kids or adults.  Looking back, I know there were a few things I shouldn't have done that made life hell for my Scoutmasters.  And likewise it was paid back to me by a few snot nosed brats that needed a good paddling. 

Believe me, they don't all look like this:

The problem with being a Scoutmaster is that you are either bored to death while the Scouts are off doing their thing, or are inundated by 20 to 30 youths with too much energy.  So, it comes to the point where payback stops being a bitch and starts being a demonic force that will scare the pants off of any camper.  Case in point:  The Wampus. 

Now I live down in Florida and when it comes to the woods it means lots of wild hogs.  I have actually run into a pack of them while out on a trail with the rest of my troop.  They are big scary looking things that have a bad attitude.

I remember being told to take safety precautions around camp.  Always use the buddy system.  Make sure trash is in it's place.  Don't go off the beaten path.  Why?  Because of the wampus.  That's right, it was an animal that was off the wild pig line, but had broader shoulders like a bear, and bear like claws.  It also made a lot of noise, and squealed.  It liked to eat Scouts, so make sure to mind your Scoutmasters. 

Really, before South Park came out with Manbearpig, there was the wampus.

Really, it was a great scare tactic for bored Scoutmasters. 

But here's a fun fact.  What does a wampus sound like?  Well, it sounds a lot like a ghost howler.

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-a-Ghost-Howler/

I preferred using the metal baked bean cans, but they have a good overall method.  And why not make good use of them?  Those little bastards have driven me to drink before.  And I don't even drink.

But back to the point.  The wampus.  It turns out however we were wrong all along.  I searched google, and found out a few things.

Wampus cat

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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A cougar

The Wampus cat is a creature in American folklore, variously described as some kind of fearsome variation on a cougar.

Oops.  It turns out the tale of the wampus kind of got twisted by the time it got to our ears.  Here's the Wikipedia description:

Description[edit]

The wampus cat is often compared to the Ewah of Cherokee mythology, in that it was a woman who disguised herself in the skin of a cougar to spy on the men of the tribe, as they sat around the campfire with their wolf brothers, and told sacred stories on a hunting trip. When the woman was discovered, the tribe's medicine man punished her by transforming her into a half-woman, half-cat, who supposedly still haunts the forests of East Tennessee.^[1] In folklore, it can be seen as one of a number of fearsome critters. In some sections of rural East Tennessee, the legend of the Wampus Cat takes on a more sinister tone. It is said that the Wampus Cat is a spirit of death and the earth, and when her cry is heard, it means someone is going to die and be buried within the next three days.

So that's my tale.  The truth is once the kids get to be Boy Scouts it gets to be a little harder to scare them.  However, it's the Cub Scouts, Webelos, and first years Boy Scouts that you can really scare.  I recommend it to bored and angry Scoutmasters.  It's just a heck of a lot of fun.  I'm sure all the campers will find it funny after years of therapy.