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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (26496)	12/5/1998 4:23:00 PM
From: joe	Respond to of 108807

Steve, just a bit of irreverence;-) >>At the same time, a structured and inherently hierarchical organization with a distinctly competitive flair (how many merit badges does your kid have?) seems a poor device to teach kids something that should involve liberation from structure, hierarchy, and competition.<< You sound like a great Father, and so your son is fortunate, but many other children may not be so fortunate. Anotherwords, for some kids, what you describe above would be much better than what they get at home. In my case for example, what you mention above would have been a joy trip to Disneyworld compared to what I had to contend with. cheers, joe

To: Dayuhan who wrote (26496)	12/5/1998 9:45:00 PM
From: Hubert Few	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Well, this is a bit off the beaten path, but one experience I had as a boy scout went more or less exactly as follows. I was new to camping....and in those days I mean camping as in "primitive". Well, I forget exactly what the circumstances were but I was one of the younger kids. My dad never went camping with us, and I was basically in with the same group of kids who tormented me at school. Anyway, the time came to "relieve myself" as in the disposal of solids. I meekly inquired of one of the group where the latrine was. One of them pointed toward an open field where there was a hole dug in the ground, with no sort of privacy....just a hole in the ground. To say that I was embarrassed would be an understatement. I was used to such embarrassment however. Being overweight, tall, wearing glasses and braces and having a speech impediment will do that. Anyway, I swallowed my pride and commenced to do my biz in the wide-open field as I figured it must be when one was camping. Then I hear a chorus of laughter....it was a joke you see, to see if anyone was dumb enough to actually do it I suppose. I turn and to my horror practically the whole troop was standing there watching and laughing. Such are the wholesome values and "bonding" of young men in their formative years. I learned quickly that the best way to avoid such humiliation was to strike out either physically or with my trademark cynical sense of humor. I once very nearly gave a teacher a stroke.....no exaggeration. He used to throw various articles across the room to get my attention, usually erasers. On one such occasion I was giving a demonstration of a jet fighter strafing a village. The eraser bounced off my head and the history teacher, a retired USAF Colonel (my best subject....nearly straight A's) was SCREAMING at me with veins in his head popping out in a frightful manner. "Mr. Few....do you want to SIT IN YOUR SEAT IN THE MANNER FOR WHICH IT WAS DESIGNED OR WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE SENT TO THE PRINCIPLE'S OFFICE FOR ANOTHER PADDLING"???? I assumed the mocking calm and composure that I practiced and perfected to an art and replied "Would you repeat the question please, Sir?". Oh my classmates roared....as always, the NERVE of that Few kid. I was quite a disruptive influence to be sure. I disrupted and distracted myself right out of an education for the most part. A few years later the guy actually did die of a stroke...I have wondered more than once if he ever realized that I respected him and found him to be one of the best teachers in school. But he was soooo sadly out of touch with the reality of my little hometown school. He probably thought he was making a difference, maybe he did. He was a freaking relic, and I was always envious of people like him to whom life's battles seemed so clear and justified.