Happy Mother's Day

I wanted to start buy wishing all Mothers in this world a very "Happy Mother's Day," and in their honor I would like to salute all of the present, past, and future Moms that have chosen to become leaders in their son's scout units.

Den Mothers were what we called them back in the day and these women were a one-man army (pardon the political incorrectness) and could handle every situation a cub scout could and would throw at them at a moment's notice.

I remember my first Den Mother and she is now long gone and I remember her as a leader that held den meetings from her home and while she held "den court", she also did the laundry, cooked the family meal, played whatever den sport we had going, planned the meetings, removed staples from fingers, and never lost her smile.

I wonder what page in the Den Mother's Handbook told the leaders how to remove staples from fingers or other body parts (we had Joey that once stapled his belly...don't know how he did that but he did).

Den Mothers were the experts on Popsicle stick art...

And again I wondered if the Den Mother's handbook gave hints and procedures on how to create magic with Popsicle sticks.

I can only imagine it may have looked like this;

Step one...eat a bazillion Popsicles

Step two...save and wash the sticks

Step three...break out the school glue and newspapers

Step four .... clean up after projects are completed.

Step five....eat a bazillion Popsicles for next week's meeting.

We always started the meetings the same:

1. Gathering

2. Opening

3. Activities and games

4. Closing

But the biggest thing I remember was that before we left our den meetings our leader would always tell us to do something nice for our moms like help her put her coat on, or hold the door open for her, or push in her chair for her.

And we always did. At least I did.

My mother was a den leader for a very short time and I miss her dearly.

So Happy Mother's Day !

"Oh, Mrs. L...Joey's stapled himself to the tablecloth again!"