Saturday, March 14, 2009

My Daughter, the Boy Scout


I have a daughter and she has attended more scout meetings than I can remember...partly because I was a Cub Scout Leader for my son's unit and I am now a part of a Boy Scout troop and also because of my Commissioner responsibilities (she is too young yet to stay home alone).
I have had great fun watching her become an unofficial mascot to the units we visit together as she has participated in many of the groups activities.
By the way, she is in Girl Scouts.
At the age of 8, my daughter has learned how to navigate with a map and compass and has learned how to cook foil dinners with the best of the scouts.
When she was 6, she could recite the Tiger Oath, Cub Scout Promise, and the Boy Scout Promise with the best of them.
What has been the most fun with my daughter is that she is teaching me things about life that most 8 yr. old's would never think about.
She has taught me that you can never change history but you can change the future.
This is something that I already knew.
She keeps me on my toes with new ways to lead and new ways to present ideas to the scouts.
She will try anything once and has re-enforced that a good leader will never expect his scouts to do anything that he wouldn't do for himself.
So with that in mind, I took a ride down a zip line at scout camp last summer ( I am severely altitude challenged).
It took a long time for me to screw up enough courage to take that step off that tower for that ride of my life.
What made me follow through with the challenge was hearing my daughter's voice, in the back or my mind saying, "Do it for the boys, Dod (she calls me Dod), do it for me, too."
The line to take the ride was getting longer and longer.
After refusing a free grape "Slushie," from the scout at the top of the tower, I took that step off and took the ride.
I hated every minute of it!
Now that it's long over, I remember putting my money where my mouth was and did something that I would want every scout to try.
You can never change the past and what is done is done. You can learn from it and move on.
The ability to use history is a great tool if you take that knowledge and use it to change the future.
Don't re-live the things done wrong and re-live those painful memories. Take those memories and build a more positive future.
Why reinvent the wheel when you can add ball bearings, springs, and shocks to make life's ride a whole lot more enjoyable?
Wonderful words of wisdom...through my daughter, the Boy Scout.

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