I'm on the fence with my experience in Scouting. My view changes depending on the time of day. On one hand it something that I was entirely unsuited for. I hated change and trying new things. It was a place of conformity, noise, shouting and emerging testosterone and machismo. I got put, at one point, in a "patrol" that was full of school bullies. I assume the scoutmasters thought that it would be character-building for me. My first camp was filled with dread at the impending "camp christening" that never, in fact, came to pass. I still think about my first experience on a climbing wall and being frozen, a few inches from the ground, and receiving no help from the venture scout holding the safety rope below. I still remember sharing a tent with a bunch of kids who would discuss, when they thought I wasn't there, but was in fact hiding in the dark, how much they didn't like me. I remember having another tent all on my own because I had ringworm. I still, as you know, count the gang show being on my long list of early stage failures!But on the other hand it was a place where I could be a different person to who I was at school. I could, at last, let off some steam. There was an old man in the stores at the back - the quartermaster - who'd sort you out with tent pegs and suchlike. There was a kid called R who told me all I needed to know about jerking off. I was put, on other occasions, in sixes and patrols that were slightly more suited to a kid of my sensitivities and was properly looked after. I developed an early crush on a curly-haired kid called N. He was crazy - seriously so. I finally cracked canoing and still remember the surprise on the scoutmaster's face when I was the first back from the other side of the lake. Camp fires and the occasional cooking triumphs. Lightweight camp wins and bike rides across Belgium. Running wild and wide games. Being given a lift from Roald Dahl when we were lost. Catching the gits out in rounders in high summer - three times. The nice sisters from ventures who'd just been to the Queen, a Kind of Magic concert at Wembley. Getting drunk at the scoutmasters house and dipping someone's tie in his coffee and going crazy in the minigym upstairs.
If I had kids I'd probably send them to cubs and scouts. I'd want them to have the good times and the things that it did, in fact, teach me. I'd desparately try to protect them from the bad and be devastated if I failed to do so.
I still have a dream now and then about returning to scouts because I missed my last "parade". I feel nervous, again, about the prospect (which I want to avoid) of "going up" into Ventures. I feel that it would be easier and more sensible if I wasn't there.
And my shirt's way too small.
