A Higher Standard

I was recently asked to be one of the leaders of a Cub Scout troop. This took me by surprise as I thought only women were Cub Scout leaders. I’m not being sexist; it’s just that Cub Scouts typically occurs early in the afternoon, when everyone with a 9 to 5 is still working.

And, I happen to have a 9 to 5 job. With my commute I have to leave work at 2:30 to get there on time. It takes a severe chunk out of the workday, but I decided that if I’m going to be a Cub Scout leader, we were going to be one sharp troop.
One of the things that gripes me about the young scouting program is the luke-warm manner in which all of the ceremonies are done. I figure, “If were going to go through all the trouble of performing these ceremonies, we might as well be awesome at them.
After reading the schedule for the next pack meeting and finding that we, the Webelos, had the flag ceremony, the other leader and I felt driven to have our boys perform the flag ceremony as sharp as a small group of 10-year-old boys could.
One of the parents in our troop worked in a location where they have flag poles for sale, and she let us use the poles to practice raising, lowering, posting and retiring the flag. We’d gotten so tight that the boys starting thinking of ways they could make the ceremony more legitimate.
The boys choreographed and paced their marching, synchronized their salutes, and brought their own color posting as close to military standard as possible. It certainly isn’t necessary and sometimes I feel as though the formality is wasted or lost on the sleepy participants at pack meetings, but I think it’s impressive to see boys so young take the flag ceremony so seriously.  You should take your troop to Colonial Flag where they have custom flags and flag poles for sale.