The B.S. of America

I was never in the Boy Scouts. Our family wasn’t the joining type. We mostly steered clear of organizations of all kinds. If we wanted to go bowling, we went to the bowling alley and did bowling things. Matching shirts were not required. Enough of my friends were Boy Scouts, however, for me to know what’s involved. I got to wondering how the Boy Scout ethos is holding up after all these years.

Come to think of it, I’m not sure the Boy Scouts even exists anymore. I seem to recall rather a lot of lawsuits. I better check.

Well, I’m back. Sure enough, if you squint hard enough, the Boys Scouts still exists. Except it’s just not for boys anymore, which in most ways defeats its stated purpose. But it’ll still do for the purposes of our discussion. The Scouts take an oath. Oaths used to be pretty serious public declarations of intent. Way back when, oaths were understood to be the Terms of Service consent form for standing outside the Pearly Gates with some ‘splainin’ to do if you broke them. The only thing people adhere to as rigidly as an oath nowadays is a grudge over someone who took your parking space. Every other promise seems pretty conditional at this point.

Anyway, the Scout Oath says you’ll obey the Scout Law, which reads as follows:

A Scout is Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean and Reverent.

I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot here, but a Scout should also put a comma after Clean, as God and Strunk and White intended. But let’s not quibble. That’s a pretty good rundown of how a good male citizen should behave. I have no idea how a good female citizen should behave. I’ve only met one in the last thirty years, and I married her, so the sample size is too small to make any sweeping judgments.

Since the scouts of all flavors include girls now, you could assume that they intend for girls to act like boys, but I am beset by doubts on that score. Making all the boys into little girls is probably more like it. I’ve noticed that the gender uniformity river only flows one way. But a good citizen is a good citizen, wherever you find one. Let’s see how well the average citizen is adhering to the precepts of Scout Law, with or without the BSA’s ministrations in their yute. Let’s go to Walmart!

If there’s anyplace better than Wallie World to put your finger on the pulse of society, I’m glad I haven’t experienced it. I’m not sure if the county lockup or a methadone clinic would be a sideways move, or a downward hop from our tiny town Wallie World. Since it’s basically the only game in town, you get a good blast of what most people are like, because most people are required to go there if they want stuff like groceries or clothes named George.

I essentially never leave my house, so I’m going to rely on my wife’s rundown of the goings on at the Walton’s Rodeo Drive for Rodeo clowns. She always returns from grocery shopping there somewhat haggard. I ask her about her trips the way Henry Hill queries Karen after her trip to see Jimmy the Gent. She likes to pause to compose herself first, and of course wash herself thoroughly with bleach, including her eyes. Then we get down to it. I’ll see if I can compare tales from her most recent trip to the entries in the Scout Law, and see how Ammurhiga is shaping up recently.

• Trustworthy: Everything smaller than a mainframe computer is locked up in cages in the electronics department. Someone is stationed at the self-checkout to see if you’re putting a sticker from the bananas on a flat screen, and they’d like to see your receipt on the way out the door. Hard fail.
• Loyal: Well, everyone in town shops there, but that’s because it put everything else out of business, so you can’t draw dispositive conclusions from that. Everything in the building that comes in a box is from China, so I guess that’s a kind of loyalty. You know, to Deng Xiaoping. Partial pass.
• Helpful: Wallie World has helpfully removed all the helpers from their buildings. There are a few people who will help you put seven canned hams into one shopping bag on top of your eggs, but that’s about it. Partial pass.
• Friendly: There are still big circular stickers on the floors to keep the patrons from coming within six feet of each other, lest infection or knifefights break out. Hard fail.
• Courteous: My wife stood in line behind a woman with “FUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT” in very large letters on the back of her T-shirt. I’d say that about covers both “courteous” and “friendly,” wouldn’t you? And it also shows that unisex scouting is having a negligible effect on any old gender. Hard, hard fail.
• Kind: My wife, who is 100% of Italian descent, and has spoken Italian to Italians in Italy, often asks for Genoa salami at the deli counter. The clerks behind the counter always kindly correct her correct pronunciation of Genoa by asking, “Do you mean Jenn OH ah salami?” Every. Single. Time. Hard fail.
• Obedient: Everyone in the ten items or less line has forty items in their cart. Hard fail.
• Cheerful: If anyone ever smiled in a Wallie World, they’d have them stuffed and displayed.
• Thrifty: Thrifty? People driving $80,000 pickup trucks with 7-year mortgages on them are buying 80″ televisions with payday loans to hang in their single-wide trailers. Let’s change the subject.
• Clean: Wallie world is the first place outside the heavy construction industry where people wake up dirty, and pick up more barnacles as the day progresses. Hard, hard, hard fail.
• Reverent: The churches are empty, but the Wallie World is packed. Draw you own conclusions.

So it appears that adding girls to the Boy Scouts didn’t do the trick of making good citizens. I think we need to add all the adults, too, and even geriatrics to the membership. We’ll need about five hundred Cardinal Richelieu types in charge of it to start over properly. And we should get that guy from Ben Hur that hits the post with big mallets in the trireme to indicate ramming speed to supervise the meetings.

[Update: Many thanks to Bob for his generous contribution to the tip jar. Contributions like his keep this blog, and blogger, going.]