Meritorious

To understand this post, you have to know a few things about my younger brother, David. The first is that he's kind of hard-core. He hiked the PCT two years ago, and after that he joined up with the Air Force to become a SERE specialist. In other words (as I have often repeated), when the zombie apocalypse comes, I'm on his team. The second is that he's stupid good with kids. For some reason they just love him. I don't think I've ever seen him interact with a child that did not eventually end up using him as playground.

But back to this post.

Today while Nate and I were out to lunch with Tim, Meredith, Ben, and Heather (and their various Childrens), someone commented on the fact that Toad was wearing a scout-like shirt. This lead to discussion of the fact that Tim was an Eagle Scout, to which I replied, "That means he's awesome," (because I have somewhat of a thing for Eagle Scouts) (a not-in-any-way-inappropriate thing; I just admire the fortitude it takes to withstand the teasing that inevitably goes along with sticking to scouts for ten plus years) to which Meredith replied, "It certainly means he's handy!"

I turned to Ben, nodded at Toad and said, "Are you going to put him in scouts when he's older?"

"Nah," he said, and went on to explain that a lot of times the people in charge of the troops shouldn't necessarily be teaching kids anything about being in the wilderness. Our brother-in-law Curt (a national park ranger) has had to rescue more than a few troops from their own leader's stupidity- things like wandering off-trail without actually knowing how to navigate, or not realizing that it's probably not smart to stand too close to geysers. I elbowed Nathan and said, "Yeah, if we have kids we won't put 'em in scouts, either- we'll ship 'em off to their Uncle David for the summers! That way they'll learn some actually useful skills, like survival and killing zombies!"

This made Ben laugh, and we started talking potential merit badges (as well as better names for the scouts, like maybe Gryphon Scouts), and suddenly a Story Seed burst into beautiful bloom. So I've been wresting with it ever since, trying to force it into more than just a brilliant concept. I started one or two versions, but in the end I came to grips with the fact that this really, really just needs to be an illustrated story- because otherwise the joke of the merit badges won't be as hilarious, I think.

So if you've got a great idea for a non-standard merit-badge, pipe up! I'm more than willing to steal from other folk's creativity...