Fat Old Guy

"Pointless!!!! Wow! Not very Scoutlike are we???" I could comment but I won't say anything except, "Odd, isn't it?"

Ah Mr. White, again with the "FOG," you show your character by your actions and your comments. As for the rest of your comments, to respond in your fashion, perhaps you need to check your meds because your paranoia is showing. As for your other comments . . . "I said that the scout knows if he passed the reqirement or not. That is true. " Not always. "Did you learn the bowline?" "I dunno . . . I tied some knots but I don't remember what they are.?" "I said once the book is signed there is no going back. That was an incorrect statement." Thank you.

"Late last night (early this morning?) I read some of the older threads and especially enjoyed the discussion on the "right" age for a boy to earn Eagle. I had to laugh, our Troop leaders (SM and ASM) feel that 14 is too young for LIFE." At the risk of drawing Bob White's wrath, I'm inclined to agree with them. We have a Scout who will be a Life Scout months before his 12th birthday. What does he know? Not much. What does he do? Not much, he's the Librarian and the adults are all pretty sure that his Dad, an ASM, takes care of the Library for him. It was recently disclosed that his mother packs his gear for camping. Unfortunately, the rules require that we advance him. Now that the requirements are being interpreted to be "open book" . . . who knows what will happen.

Let me check . . . A Scout is . . . . nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope . . . not one of those is Snippy.

"What has been stated is that a requirement can't be taken away once marked off." Why? Oscars can be revoked as can Nobel Prizes. If the requirement was marked off as the result of malfeasance, misfeasance, or nonfeasance why should it be allowed to stand? " There are however other ways to block further advancement of either scout until the situation has been remedied." Not from what Bob White and others have long stated. According to Bob White, et al if the requirements are checked off, you can't decide to hold back advancement because you don't like the way that they have been accomplished. If you start creating reasons to hold back the Scout then you are really no better than the person who signed off on things that weren't done.

"BOTH offenders should be treated in the manner that any other scout that has broken multiple points of the Scout Law is treated, including adults that lack the backbone to say no, when no needs to be said." Be that as it may, according to Mr. White there is no recourse once that pen has scribbled a signature in the handbook. The requirement is signed off and nothing can undo that.

Bob White, I read your email and I notice that you still didn't answer my question. BTW, don't recall that "Snippy" is once of the points of the Scout Law, perhaps I am mistaken because I often am and you never are. Is bribery that far out of the question. We live in a world where a mother killed to get her daughter a slot on a cheerleading squad. We live in a world where Little League teams import ringers from South America and forge documents so they can play. We live in a world where parents will attempt to bribe officials in everything from beauty contests to pee-wee football. Again, I ask you is bribery in a Scout troop out of the question? Even if we don't use the extreme example of bribery there are other situations where less than ethical people could do less than ethical things and set boys up for promotion that they don't deserve.(This message has been edited by Fat Old Guy)

Okay Hops, I'll try this again. It all depends on your answer to "Is the flag patch a flag?" If you consider the flag patch to be a flag then the flag code states that when it is displayed against a surface that the canton be to the viewer's left (flag's right). If you consider that the flag patch is not a flag then it doesn't matter. Why should the canton be on the flag's right? As explained on the Am. Legion's site, that is a place of honor. So, by extension, having the blue field to the flag's left is placing it in a position of less honor.

As I said before, we do it the right way and they do it the Army way. Do you think that this is an episode of "Mail Call"?

Nice, polite and very Scoutlike response, Bob White. I am impressed by the way that you adhere to the Scout Law in all of your responses, we all can learn from you. So, you are saying that such a thing as I posited could not happen? If so, what checks are in place to ensure that it could not happen?

"Remember that the swim test begins by having the Scout jump feet first into water that is over his head. Why? Because some Scouts do not know how to come back up to the surface. Believe me. I've seen it. They sit on the bottom until someone comes to pull them out. They may be able to swim like fish, but once sunk . . . they're sunk." Hmmmmm . . . I've never seen that. I've monitored more than a few Navy swim tests. You'd be surprised how many sailors aren't good swimmers but they all knew how to fight their way back to the surface.

"Don't take it. Your reference to it as a "job" and not a position is a dead give away. " That's pushing it.

"This training program would clearly define the process of training and testing, as opposed to the large group training and signing off that happens all too often." The problem that I see is that even if leaders, both youth and adult, have gone through training too many are still willing to sign off on half-baked attempts at doing the task. Why? It could be that they don't have the backbone to support the requirements. It could be that they don't want a confrontation with the parents. It could be that they are afraid if the kid doesn't pass, he'll quit. How many times have we all heard something like, "He's been working on that knot for weeks, can't you sign him off so he won't be behind his friends?" "but once the book is signed there is no going back." So if a Scout joins a troop and Dad, who owns the local bike store, gives the SPL a 75% discount on a new BMX bike which in turn prompts the SPL to sign off on everything in the new Scout't book, all the way to 1st Class, there's no going back even if the BOR knows what happened?

If the troop thinks that you're doing a good job and YOU think that you're doing a good job, consider it. Are you enjoying the job? Have you accomplished what you wanted to accomplish? Is there something else that you'd rather be doing?

"Testing (or retesting) at the BOR is not appropriate." The problem is that there seems to be no final check or balance. What if the person doing the signing off is one of those "well, he tried really hard so let's give it to him types"? What if the BOR knows that the Scout's dad did 99% of the Scout's job as QM? The BOR needs to be more than just a bunch of happy talk questions. How do you like Scouting? What was your favorite Merit Badge? A BOR should be given the lattitude to pursue any line of questioning if they determine that there has been a breakdown along the line.

There are some kids that I wouldn't have trouble signing off on their swim test without doing a formal test. For example, the kid who swam five miles (without a break) in a "Swim-a-thon" for charity and is one of the stars of the local club's swim team.

" but the Parish School kids just will not leave Scouts in their school alone without picking on them unmercifully." Oh, for the good old days when if Scout was getting picked on, other Scouts would explain the meaning of Friendly and Courteous to the malefactor with the points punctuated by a good thumping.

"The most difficult time I have with this is two ASMs who are folicly challenged, and refuse to set a good example. But I keep trying!" I've never understood why men get so paranoid about going bald and then have the audacity to call women vain.

I don't think that the question is that strange for a BOR. I ask odd questions to see how the Scouts will respond to strange questions. However, I don't think that I'd send him off to search for the answer to that one before he was advanced. I do think that this Scoutmaster needs someone to talk to him.

"The Flag Police (a division of the Uniform Police) can have my 3x5 flag from my frontyard flagpole when they pry my cold dead fingers from it." What if they offered you a 3'x5.7' flag to replace it?

"Is it everyone's experience that Scouters shake with the right hand by impulse. "Why not the left? " I seem to spend so much time at Scout activities that my first impulse is to offer the left hand in almost any circumstance. What amuses me is when I run into a Scouter somewhere other than a Scout activity, I offer my left hand and he responds "we don't have to do that, we're not doing Scouting now."

"OK. I stand (actually sitting) corrected. So since it is a law, what is the recourse if the law is violated?" The Supreme Court knocked down the penalties for violating the Flag Code when they decided that burning the flag was protected by the 1st Amendment. That must have made Merlyn dance with glee.

I was wondering why is called Essential Tremor thinking that "essential" meant "needed" or "fundamental" I soon found out that "essential" in the medical world means "unknown cause". Those doctors, doing what they can to confuse us. I found a website, http://www.essentialtremor.org/, that has quite a bit of information.

"While I follow & support the Flag Code lets remember it's just a code. Not a law." Sorry, it is a law. The whole collection of US laws is refered to in the collective as the US Code. The Flag Code is Title 4 of the US Code code noun 1. A systematically arranged and comprehensive collection of laws. 2. A systematic collection of regulations and rules of procedure or conduct: a traffic code.

Hey Kwc57! No kidding. I was involved in most of those discussions and I've done a fair amount of research into the question. Ever heard the saying, "there's the right way, the wrong way and the Army way"? Well the Army does it the Army way and we do it the right way.