Scoutmaster Podcast 295

I'm Bruce Colkebeck and I'm an assistant Scoutmaster with troop 442 in Salisbury, North Carolina. This edition of Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by backers like me.

And now for you, Scoutmaster, We decided that we should get a water buffalo- That's a big, flexible water tank called a water buffalo- for our troop. So we went and we talked to the scouts about raising the money to buy the water buffalo and our senior patrol leader said: Hey, we don't need to raise money, We just need two hydrogen buffalos and one oxygen buffalo. Don't blame me for that one, please. That was from Tony Lacaba, who's an assistant Scoutmaster with troop 581 in Bristow, Virginia.

Thanks, Tony, I think. Hey, this is podcast number 295.. Hey, Hey,

Welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clarke Green Looking in the mailbag. Oh, my goodness, Let's see. We heard from Sergei Stretzky, who is in Illinois, And Sergei wrote in to say: I am 20 years old. I was born and raised in Eastern Europe, in Ukraine. As a child I was in the Scout Organization Plast for eight years.

I now live in Illinois and I miss going camping and having adventures. I always like to go to the mountains and go boating. I have a great traveling experience, survival skills and first aid skills. I wanna meet some Scouts and get a taste of adventure again. Hey, if you're in Illinois and you're a Scouter and you can help Sergei out, get in touch with me.

Huh, He should be getting back to me with a little bit more of an exact location than just the state of Illinois, but I'm sure we can get you connected there. Sergei Gregory Matasio is in Nairobi, Kenya. He says greetings from the Scouts in Nairobi. I'm humbled to come across your site. I am a Rover Scout and a facilitator too, at the Westlands Scouts Local Association under the umbrella of Kenya Scouts Association, And my name is Rover Greg.

Well, Rover Greg, I'm so happy you got in touch and we look forward to talking to you in the future. Will Hartzell is an assistant Scoutmaster in Honolulu, Hawaii, And Will wrote to say aloha, thanks for all you do for so many people and for helping make Scouting the greatest, most important and most meaningful organization on planet Earth.

I've been a silent follower of yours for some time now and enjoy your articles very much. I helped to start Troop 777 here in Honolulu four years ago and I've been an assistant Scoutmaster since that time. It is likely I'll become the next Scoutmaster within a month and will certainly take the opportunity to dig deeper into your articles and seek guidance for this exciting new role.

Well, Will, I'm so happy to hear from you. I'm glad you're finding what we're doing useful and I'm happy to dispense just a boatload of useful advice- or, okay, just advice- to anybody who is taking on their role as Scoutmaster. Good for you. This next message- I'll keep the center anonymous because it was a question that we addressed in last week's podcast. But they wrote in to say: I just listened to podcast number 294..

I think you nailed it. You were very perceptive there And what this listener is writing about is what we dealt with about being a cooperative volunteer in last week's podcast. If you haven't heard it, you can go back and listen to it. It's pretty easy to do: Go to scoutmastercgcom, look for podcast number 294, Cooperative Volunteering.

Anyway, they went on to say: you know, it's funny, I didn't really have the idea that I was gonna be taking over or being negative to other scouts. I think that the scouts I'm talking about are probably getting it mostly right. What I wanted to do was be constructive and tweak a small point or two here or there. But while listening to your podcast I kind of woke up to realize that you're right. You're seeing something I didn't. Even though I'm trying to be constructive and being critical or negative wasn't my intention, I do understand that it's buried there just a little bit.

It certainly would come off more of that way to the scouts who I'm talking about. So I think you addressed it very well and thank you for opening my eyes.

Well, you know, when you go into a situation and your intentions are very positive and you wanna be constructive, you can be successful in doing that. Certainly, The whole thing is developing that relationship before you start offering constructive criticisms.

Right, And that's basically what we were talking about last week. So I'm glad that was useful for you. Last week we had a couple of really great lively chat sessions.

We have live chat sessions at scoutmastercgcom Usually Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. If you keep an eye on our Facebook feed and our Twitter feed, they'll alert you to when I'm going to be there alive, and a lot of folks check in from all over the place. I call them our frequent flyers. But this past week we also got to chat with Stephen Thuler, who is a new scoutmaster in Logan, Utah. Thanks for checking in, Stephen. Come over and join us on the live chat.

It's great fun. Before I go any further this week, I wanna ask you a favor. Thousands of scouts all 50 states and 31 other countries actually listen into the Scoutmaster podcast And I depend on listeners support to keep the podcast on the air, to help with the cost of producing and publishing everything we do at scoutmastercgcom.

Now, if you'll go to scoutmastercgcom and click the support link at the top of the page, you'll find many options that fit every budget to help support this work, And you can also get autographed copies of my books. By doing so, You can join hundreds of fellow scouts who generously support the blog, the podcast and all the resources that are freely available to scouts all over the world at scoutmastercgcom. Do that this week and I will personally thank you during next week's podcast.

Well, in this week's podcast we've got a couple of email questions to answer and there's no reason we can't get started. So let's get started, shall we? 10,, nine, eight, seven, Six, five, four, three, Two, one. Let's start the fun. Find me a letter, Send it by name. Email, that is folks.

And here's an answer to one of your emails. This is an email I got recently said this: We recently had a ceremony for a scout who had turned 18 years old without becoming an Eagle Scout but was going to move on to become an adult volunteer. Several people mentioned to me in passing that it was a terrible shame that the scout never got Eagle. And it was a terrible shame that the scout never got Eagle And kind of thought it was a terrible waste of time. I thought they were dead wrong and I felt a little insulted. Scout I'm talking about has done a lot of really great things, is really a great guy, spent a lot of time in scouts, wasn't very interested in becoming an Eagle And to call what he did in scouting a waste of time bothers me a little bit.

If we're just concentrating on getting Eagle, we're missing the fact that there's a whole lot more a young person you can get out of scouting Down the road. Another troop just awarded a 13-year-old Eagle And there were high fives and kudos passed around. But I beg to ask you which scouting career was more successful.

Well, I'm going to agree with you almost. Oh, I guess maybe about 80%, And my answer might sound a little snotty And I apologize if it does. I guess it just kind of comes with the territory sometimes, But really no, I'm intending this in the best way possible. First, people have this overblown attitude towards becoming an Eagle, And I get that. I wish they would understand that there are a lot of scouts who can get a great deal out of scouting without ever wanting to become an Eagle Scout.

You know, it's a great achievement, sure, But not everybody's interested in it. And if people don't get it- but not everybody's interested in it, And if people did understand that they wouldn't stand around and kind of say under the breath, wow, it's just a dirty shame, and boy didn't get to be an Eagle Scout. Maybe he wasn't interested, Maybe it meant nothing to him, Maybe what was important to him, what he was doing in scouts. But I got to tell you, friend, you're kind of doing the same thing in trying to draw a comparison between this scout and the 13-year-old Eagle Scout, Because it kind of sounds like you think the 13-year-old Eagle Scout wasn't as successful as this scout. And this was what really takes me to the part where I'm going to be a little snotty.

Okay, These kind of comparisons, these apple and orange comparisons, aren't proper in any way that we do them. You're asking me to give you an opinion based on two incomparable things, And at the heart of that matter lies a whole lot of things. That kind of dog us in scouting.

You know in the way that we look at things and the way we consider things. So let me explain myself.

In drawing a comparison between those two scouts, you're kind of asking which is the best fruit, an orange or an apple? Now, I like oranges, okay, But you know, not all that often Apples are great. I probably like them more.

All right, To be honest with you, I don't know about you, but if somebody offered me the choice of an apple or an orange, I'd probably take the apple seven times out of ten, unless I was kind of in an orange mood, if you know what I'm talking about. Now, if somebody else chose the orange, well, I wouldn't get all worked up about it and try to explain why the apple was so much better, because I don't have to eat what they chose, right, I get to eat my apple.

Now, no matter how hard you try to make every apple or orange the same as all the others, each one's got to be a little bit different, right? It'd be pretty boring eating identical apples or oranges all the time. Anyway, No matter how hard you try, you can't make an apple into an orange or vice versa.

So that kind of leads to the question: are all scouts the same? No, they're not, Not by a long shot, right?

Are all eagle scouts exactly the same? No, they're not, Not by a long shot.

Do I care if a scout achieves eagle? No, actually not really. I mean, it's something great to do, but not everybody's all that interested in it.

Do I care how old a scout is when they achieve eagle? No, I don't.

Well, look honestly, really I do. I would prefer they were younger than 17 years, 11 months and 28 days, but you know, I've learned that you don't always get what you want.

Okay, You know I serve three or four more times as long as a Scoutmaster than most people do. Does that make me something special? No, not really. I just manage to stay around longer, That's all I mean. You see where I'm headed here. The kind of comparisons that we often draw as scouters is- wait for it- apples and oranges.

They're just things that they're. Well, I love it. A good idiom, okay. And the idiom of comparing apples to oranges refers to the apparent differences between things that are incomparable or inco-measurable. It's a false analogy, like saying an apple is not a good orange. And I love a good idiom And this one's a doozy right.

You know, in much of Europe when they use this idiom they say apples and pears, And in Latin America it's potatoes and sweet potatoes, Believe it or not. In Serbia, okay, They say comparing grandmothers and toads. In Romania they compare cows to longjons.

The Welsh compare honey and butter, And there's a Danish idiom that I really like: What is highest, A roundtower or a thunderclap? In Russia they compare warm and soft.

In Poland they ask what is gingerbread to a widnall? I mean really, Rather than asking who's the most successful scout, How about if we ask if that particular young person got something out of being a scout? There's no comparison in the scout oath. It only uses personal pronouns. On my honor, I will do my best.

So when people want to draw comparisons like this, or they want to say: you know, this guy didn't get eagle and compared to the other guys that got eagle, well, that's kind of a waste. It's a dirty shame that he did. Oh, come on people, Really No.

How about we guide our scouts to evaluate themselves against themselves On my honor. I will do my best, Not everybody else's best. I'm going to do the best that I can possibly do.

Wouldn't that be good? I mean, isn't that a more useful thing to be able to do?

Isn't that a more useful life skill? How about we get them in the habit of doing that?

I think that would keep our eye more on the ball, don't you think? And we can leave the immeasurable comparisons of apples and oranges and toads and grandmothers and all that kind of thing to somebody else. This next email came to me from Brian Kerner.

Pretty quick question: Can a scout hold the same position of responsibility from first class all the way through life rank? I'm not saying it's a good practice, I'm just curious if it's allowed.

Well, Brian, these kind of questions come up from time to time and it's really easy to get an answer for it. I don't even have to really tell you the answer, because the answer is in the requirement.

If there was such a restriction- if, for instance, a scout could not be credited for the same position of responsibility for different ranks- it would very clearly say so within the requirement. So let's talk about this for a moment. Positions of responsibility are all listed in the requirements for first class star, life and eagle. The list is a little bit different for eagle, but it's the same for first class star and life. There is a number of months of tenure you have to serve successfully in a position of responsibility to qualify for those ranks, And those months can be served non-consecutively. They can be served in one position or in a combination of positions of responsibility.

So there you have it. It's really pretty simple, but it's a good question and I appreciate getting it. Thanks, Brian. Hey, if you have a question for me, you can get in touch. It's pretty easy to do and you're going to find out how to do that in just a moment.