Reason enough for me to raise my hand and say "ooh, ooh, pick me, pick me" ? Not by a long shot!! Between work, paramedic school, Cub Scouts, a wife and two kids, call me selfish, but I need a better reason than that to add more to an already full plate. I needed a reason that wouldn't have my wife looking across the table, with that look only a wife can pull off, saying "you already don't have time to do the things you're supposed to be getting done". (Never fear, my famous rebuttal to that is "Well I can always quit work")
So, I started looking for a better reason. I wanted to see if this town could actually support two troops. Council says that the town is big enough for 3-4 troops, but thats council. We have 427 boys registered with the school between grades 6 - 12. The existing troop has 12 scouts, with 9 of those showing up consistently. Of the eight Webelos that we crossed over last February only one is still with the troop. By those numbers I would say that the town could without a doubt support another troop.
I have the Kool-Aid house in our neighborhood. All the kids in the neighborhood hang out in my yard, playing any number of games or just tormenting each other....or me. I decided to go out one day and ask some of the older kids what they thought about scouts. Their answers were brutally honest, from "they're to geeky" to "its boring", "they don't do anything", and my favorite "ummm there's no girls".
My next stop, the existing Troop. Even though they and our Cub Pack charter through the same church, there is almost no contact between the two groups. About the only time we see each other is Scout Sunday, and Crossover. I went down one night before their meeting and told the Scout Master that we were tossing around the idea of starting another troop, and wanted to know his feelings on it before he heard it somewhere else.
He proceeded to explain to me that there wasn't enough interest to support two troops. He then went on to say we didn't have enough experience to run a successful troop, much less start one from the ground up. (I almost gave him a point on that one) He said he'd been the scout master for 18 years and the he can barely hit 50% retention with the first years. I was just about to tell him that maybe his program needs a little work if his retention was that bad, but I never got a chance. At that point he decided that he'd talked about it enough. He came straight out with "Do what you want. You'll never make it, because I have the feeder pack".
See.....Now I'm Mad...Maybe its just me, but you will NOT call my kids your feeder pack!
Very calmly I said " Really.... Iv'e had these kids for four years, if it comes down to it, who do you really think they're going to choose to go with? For that matter, I can start a new Cub Pack easier than I can a new Troop, and I guarantee every leader and every kid in this pack will come over to the new Pack."
That night I called Matt and asked him what he thought about starting a new Boy Scout Troop, and we've been working on it ever since.
Looking back on it, I liked the idea of a new challenge. I also knew I wanted a Troop for my kid to be in. One that would teach him more than how to set a tent in his back yard. A Troop where right or wrong, the scouts made the decisions and learned from the accomplishments as well as the mistakes. But, I think for that first week or so ... it was mostly out of spite, not only for being told we couldn't do it, but the way I was told we couldn't do it. Before I even talked to him I had already made up my mind to get this fire started, that night just fanned the flames a little hotter.
Why a new Troop?
For our Kids !
Strip away all the council politics, troop competition, and parent problems, all thats left is to help these kids to become independent, responsible, morally correct adults. If you can do that, even if for only one kid, then it was all worth doing!
