Bored at work this afternoon, I was browsing trave…
Bored at work this afternoon, I was browsing travel sites when I stumbled upon the travel website of Rick and Joyce Milelli. The reason this was a suprise is that in the early 80’s Rick, his little brother Jon and I were in the same boy scout troop, Troop 625, aka the “River Rats”, in Maitland, Florida. We also went to the same high school, but I didn’t see him around that much. In any case, my time with the scouts was a bit turbulent, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Rick remembers me as a real asshole, if indeed he remembers me at all. I certainly remember him, as he was the focus of one of my first crushes.
Scouts was my first brush with office politics and insane bosses, and I’m afraid to say I didn’t handle the situation in a very diplomatic fashion. Our scoutmaster was an ex-marine named Jack Champion, and he was fond of using various psychological tests on his charges, to see how they would react. He was also a bit of an egomaniac, and I butted heads with him several times when I was troop scribe. In the end, after missing a crucial emergency meeting (in which Jack basically yelled at everyone and threw three of the four patrols out of the troop) due to a prior commitment I refused to break, Jack stripped me of my rank of Star Scout, took away my office, took away my leadership corps status, etc, etc. After our little talk in which Jack told me what a little shit I was for defying him, I didn’t wait for formation. I just walked home from the shack down by Lake Minnehaha where we met and flushed the entire troop’s records down the toilet. And I never went back, to the particular dismay of my parents, who had recently bought me a tent for camping trips. I suppose it’s just as well that I didn’t get the chance to make a stink about the pseudo-Indian BS that admission into the Order of the Arrow involved.
Some of my friends who stayed in scouts later went on to become Eagle Scouts, and sometimes I would even sneak up into the organ loft of the church where the promotion ceremonies were held to watch without being detected. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had somehow managed to muster enough people skills to understand what was going on in that troop, but such thoughts are useless. I should face the fact that I’ll never know what would have been or could have been, and instead concentrate on the present.
Anyway, it’s odd how little pieces of our pasts pop up now and then, like unexpected mushrooms.
