Last Saturday I was invited to experience a one of a kind American tradition—a Cub Scout banquette. While I clearly see the benefits of being a Scout and do not aim to trash the entire program, I need to say, that was something… Three and a half hours of relentless ‘presentations’ and advancements. I say ‘presentation’ because they were mostly so poorly executed that it was just a pain to watch or hear. Reading off a slip of paper that you clearly haven’t seen before is not exactly presenting. The advancements were also everything but epic… uncoordinated, lengthy and troublesome at best. Now, I know that this is a 100-year tradition but seeing five-year-old kids swear on things they have no power of understanding just creeps me out. I doubt anything bad comes out of it but I remember some form of early indoctrination in my country and while the Scouts are nothing like it, I’m still morally opposed.
Here’s the worst part, everyone whose there, hates it. No one wants to sit through those dire three and a half hours but no one seems to care to change anything about it. The whole thing just lacks efficiency and structure. It all started with the food. Imagine four long tables form a long line and they are all filled with multiples of mac and cheese, meatballs and barbeque. Instead of letting everyone check out what they want and just go get it, you make everyone line up at one end of the table row and than move down long both sides. Because people stop and fill there plates, two thirds of the buffet where not being used to get food. Watching that being on the last table that was going to get food hurt a lot… It took over an hour until everyone got food and was done eating. Like I already said, the ‘presentations’ and advancements have tremendous room for improvement. And if you want to honor a leader’s 40 years of service, don’t dig up every picture you can find and put them in a 15 (!!!) minute slide show with music where everyone watching is done after three minutes. Overall, just make it more interesting, I mean I had good intentions but I ended up doing the word search puzzles that were supposed to be for the kids…
Yes, we feel an odd compulsion as Americans to overdo these things. Now, I do think it is good to celebrate accomplishments, even something as simple as cub scout advancement. But people mistake the form for the function, and the whole program gets bloated, and everyone is just gritting their teeth. And I think the kids can pick up on that sort of thing. Better to have some quick acknowledgments, and then celebrate by eating lots of food and building better relationships. Feasting is pretty much the most time-honored celebration that I know of. I'm a big fan.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree, I'm all about the good food. No matter how bad a presentation is, as long as there is a large spread of food, I'm in. The worst kind of cheesy banquette is at the end of high school where you get to say goodbye to all those kids you didn't talk to and the other ones you were mortal enemies with for the past ten years.
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