Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Scouting's lost games

When I was a scout and had attended many scout camps, one of my favorite games was called, "Top This."
-A game that really was simple to play and we did so sitting around the campfire at night.
The rules were simple.
Someone had to start out telling a "tall tale" about themselves and the next person had to "top" it.
For example:
  "We were so poor when I was young that we had to eat dirt...and we were grateful to have it."
The next scout would say something like, "You had dirt to eat?"
"We were so poor that we couldn't afford to have dirt and would have to take it from our neighbors yard when they weren' t looking."
The next scout would add something like, "You had neighbors? We couldn't afford to have neighbors, we had to draw pictures of people for our neighbors!"
And the tales grew funnier by the minute.
Today, that game has long gone by the wayside and now modern scouts just want to text message each other, if given half the chance.
Whatever happened to games called "Spud," "Red Light Green Light," "Kick the Can?"
I loved playing "Red Rover."
Remember playing a game called "Sardines?" or "Telephone."
Even sing-a-longs have lost their popularity.
I have heard more often than not that "Scouts don't sing!"
Brother, yes they do!
Scouts sing all the time.
Drive some to camp with the radio playing in the background and sooner or later they will be singing with the radio.
Scouts would sing more if we reintroduced some of those great old camp songs.
Remember the song about the "Titanic," or "Junior Bird man?"
How about "Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road?"
I know that I have lead many scouts in to a rousing rendition of "Johnny Verbeck."
So now if you excuse me, I am going off to sing "To the Indies and the Andes in His Undies."
It's a very daring thing to do!

*These songs are still around and all you have to do is look them up on the Internet.

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