Names and misfits

[Eamonn]

In the other thread, I kinda, sorta get Beavah's point and I kinda, sorta agree with him.

I don't know squat about the law, so I'm not going down that path.

I agree that we do have people who belong to the same organization as we do who for some reason aren't happy unless they are beating others over the head with some sort of rule book, policy, guideline, call it what you will.

This sometimes leads to the use of labels and names that either are just plain wrong or really are not a good fit.

A pal of mine has a great dog. It's mixed breed with German Shepard and Golden retriever. It looks like a German Shepard, but acts like a Goldie. He gets a little upset when people talk about his dog as being a "Man eating, vicious, junk yard". Type.

People who meet me, because I talk with an English accent think I'm English. Just this past week someone met me and said that we wouldn't get on because he was American-Irish.

Of course as it turned out I was far "More Irish" then he was and ever would be.

I of course don't think that humiliation is a tool that we should use to try and teach the young people we serve, life skills.

I also tend to think that just because a normal Lad has stood up and had to sing, he isn't going to need therapy for the rest of his life. My fear is that when get the message that humiliation is OK, they fall into the monkey see monkey do thing and being young they can build on it too such an extent that there is a danger that it might get out of hand.

 

We at our Council camp used to have a thing where people who forgot to remove their hat in the dining hall were invited to stand on a bench and sing a silly song. I watched as young Scouts entered the dining hall. Some would get very excited at just the thought that someone would get caught and seemed to take sheer joy in this just so long as they weren't the person caught.

This was a common practice for many years.

To be very honest I never really gave it a lot of thought. It was what it was. I never really seen it as a big deal. I think the same can be said for almost everyone who ever entered the dining room.

I most certainly never seen or looked at the people in charge as being abusers or guilty of hazing. I never even gave it enough thought as to view it as humiliation. - Even if that's what it was. The people in charge were nice people doing a service for kids. No matter how we now might view it they never had an intent to harm or hurt anyone.

We can argue if kids today are being brought up in an environment that isn't as tough as the one that we remember as children, we can try to shrug off the fact that some things while maybe not out and out wrong fall into that area of things that just aren't right or just are not such a good idea.

The people who are willing to label others as hazers or being guilty of abuse for these silly type of activities are also guilty of bringing humiliation and laying it at the feet of others who really don't deserve it.

At the risk of me calling them names or mislabeling them. All too often these guys come off seeming and sounding like sanctimonious, pompous pains in the neck.

Humiliation is never a good thing.

Humiliating others is not a good example for us to set and we really ought not to be doing it.

Ea.

[packsaddle]

Eamonn, I know a camp where the same song-hat policy is also applied. After I make the suggestion to the boys, we might possibly begin a movement in which we ALL intentionally wear our hats into the dining hall IN ORDER TO be allowed to sing the stupidest, most-annoying songs we can think of. So...how long do you think the tradition will last? I bet not even one session. What a great, harmless lesson in the constructive power of civil disobedience!

[Scoutfish]

pack....that is a great idea!

 

If you whole unit did that at one time, and started singing "It's raining Men" or "My little buttercup" ( Three Amigo's style), or "I'm a little teapot".

 

Anything that is just flat out silly!

 

Then I can see unit after unit purposely forgetting to take their hats off in order to upstage the last unit!

 

[Kudu]

I wonder when this rule about hats in dining halls originated.

 

I collected 35 photographs and drawings of Scouts and Scouters wearing hats indoors (even during church services), but I couldn't find any of them doing so while eating:

 

http://inquiry.net/uniforms/hats/inside.htm

 

Yours at 300 feet,

 

Kudu

http://kudu.net

 

 

 

[SSScout]

!Aye! Macarena!

 

Had all the Cubs singing and doing the motions, THEN I read a translation of the words... Never again...

[Eamonn]

I've posted this before, but I never miss an opportunity to re-tell a good story.

A really great kid that I think the world of went to the world Jambo. Not the last one in the UK but the one before that.

As part of the Jambo the Scouts did a service project for the locals. His patrol planted flowers at a local grade school.

They were invited to talk with the kids in the school.

The teacher asked them if they would do their national dance or sing their national song.

There was a Lad from Scotland in the service patrol, so he did his version of a highland dance, when they got to the two American Scouts they sung and performed the actions to "I'm a little teapot".

Of course the sad thing is now there is a class of kids who think this little tea-pot song is the American national song, when everyone knows it's Home on the range!

Ea.

[Eagle92]

Kudu,

 

Don't know when it started in dining halls, but I do know that Marine custom is that the offending Devil Dog wearing his cover has to buy a round to all present.

 

As fornot wearing hats in churches, that is customary for some churches. Roman Catholic men do not wear hats in church, except the high up clergy which were specific hats.