Okay, as cheesy as this sounds it’s true, let me explain. You might be thinking I’m going to go on a rant about moral lessons and how BSA(Boy Scouts of America) made me a better person. I’m not saying it didn’t but that’s not what was so important to me. In Scouts they teach you things like how to build an improvised shelter, splinting broken limbs, starting fires with flint and steel, or how not to unalive yourself with a shotgun (yes, they let us use guns.) Sure I thought those were valuable, useful things to know, but what mattered to me most in boy scouts were the boys.  

There’s only a few people in my friend group who aren’t in the scout troop with me. We’ve known each other for years and met through the troop since we didn’t all go to the same school or were in the same grade. We’ve had countless shenanigans and memorable moments. It’s impossible to bring up one without someone else mentioning another. After a while, you get to understand those around you at a different level. Pulling a sled loaded with 100+lbs of gear dead in the middle of February is a kind of group therapy/suffering only rivaled by running cross country (which the guys convinced me to get into.) 

A common misconception is that scouts are highly virtuous and self-righteous,which isn’t exactly how I would explain it. Yes, we take an oath and part of that involves keeping ourselves “physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight,” but at times that last part is a bit of a stretch. Left unchecked, we devolve into a pack of unhinged party animals, and I mean animals literally. There have been plenty of out of pocket and politically incorrect jokes thrown around, we just make sure the younger kids and/or adult leaders are out of earshot first. Mistakes were made and bad calls were called, especially when it came to letting the young kids cook. Outside of troop activities we are basically just another friend group. Trust me, you don’t want to know what our group chats look like. After one particular Klondike, the event I mentioned earlier where we haul a sled around, we were having a blast. We had just spent the past 12 hours pulling a sled around like dogs and running through all kinds of stations and tasks on a frigid February day. We should have been exhausted and complaining about leaving early before the awards ceremony. Nope. Like the apes we are, we found what would have been a small marsh area near our campsite, but it was iced over. I’m not sure how it got to this, but we ended up literally trying to break the ice while we were standing on it. Yeah really smart, I know. In a way, we failed successfully since we punched some holes in the ice without dunking anyone.       

All jokes aside, when it got down to business I could always trust them. If there was something you weren’t good at, someone else could do it. Everyone would find something they could do well and everything would flow like a well tuned machine. It was more than that to me though. I’m an only child, used to doing everything by myself. BSA is the complete opposite of that. As cliche as this sounds, those guys are brothers to me, and I wouldn’t trade anything for it. If any of you guys end up reading this: Thank you. For giving me something larger than myself to be a part of.