Today’s column is about boyhood and Scouting. (And a little bit about life.)

Also was reading R. Smith’s post about not being in the scouts. Well, I was in the scouts for a while, but I really didn’t get a whole lot out of it. Wasn’t my cup of tea.

We went to King’s Dominion once; played a silly game of croquet another time & did the “pinewood derby” where we each built a toy car out of a block of softwood. We all met at some TV studio—Channel 8 or 12 or somewhere off of Belt Boulevard—placed our woodencars on a toy racetrack and watched ‘em all speed down a slope as a result of gravitational force. Matter of fact, I got a trophy.

Come to think of it, once we all took a trip on an airplane from Chesterfield Airport. Circled around the area ~1500ft.or so & came back down.

Actually, I think all of that was fun. But did it ‘shape my life’, or cause me to “tie bassinettes” onto cars?

Nah.

Wrong! A bassinette isn’t a fish puller-upper either!

I actually looked up “bassinette”. (Did you think I was kidding?) Apparently it is a BABY BASKET. Now maybe I grew up on the wrong side of tracks or something, but where I’m from we called these “baby baskets”.

NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY!!!

That was about a year before I got my ass kicked by the girl down the street. Apparently she had yet to learn she was oppressed by the patriarchal social order.

Larry,

Don’t be so stupid. A bassinette is what you use to get the fish into the boat.

Every bassiboatte needs one. That and sonar…to even the odds.

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bob,

It’s a war on boys, women, goats….pretty much anything the Religion of Peace jollies can strap a bomb on and send into a crowd.

I never joined the scouts…cub or boy. Nobody I knew growing up did. When it came to burning, exploding or shooting stuff, we were all pretty much unsupervised and self taught. I think I was 6 the first time I set the woods on fire. I ran into the house where my mom was washing dishes and tried to pull the ol’ innocent “look mama…smoke” routine. It didn’t work.

Believe it or not, I was actually a Boy Scout. Since they did not have the Young Pioneers (the Soviet version of Scouting)in Virginia, I had to make do.
  My Scout troop was filled with guys like me, all of us about one step away from Juvie Detention. I did not make Eagle but I got close.
  As for the war on boys thing… does that have something to do with Iraq or Afghanistan ?

Column rejected by R. Mackenzie, 13 Oct 2006. Resubmitted to T. Culbertson 21 Dec. 2007. Rejected by Culbertson 23 Dec. Printed 3 June 2008 to fill a void.

Ha ha. Seriosuly though, what is a “bassinette” anyway? Is that like a trombone or something?

vile sexist misogynist brainwashing!  that’s what I call it! 
if you want to know where the hell you are, just consult the GPS!  Which was invented by a GIRL I’ll have you know.
just kidding.  that’s all BS.  I just needed to rant about SOMETHING today.

Also read Summers’ War Against Boys.

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