What possesses a reasonably sane woman to volunteer to take six young boys into her home and try to teach them the ways of Boy Scouting. I still don't know to this day many, many years later, but that is exactly what I did. Once a week for about five years I did all I could to take them from Cub Scouts to the "Be Prepared" stage of trailblazing and tent building.
I threw pizza parties, camping trips, and helped sell candy, popcorn, and who knows what else. I made so many cookies for den meetings that I could rival Mrs. Fields. One thing I learned early on in my mentoring was that little boys can eat like there is no tomorrow and they have more energy than Hoover Dam and those hot shot energy drinks put together.
I managed to keep most meetings from becoming riots but occasionally my nerves were tested beyond any normal limits. One such meeting centered around the only foreign member of the group who apparently was having a really bad day and decided he should not be the only one. Now this young man had spent the biggest portion of his short life in the states and spoke perfectly good English, but this day he elected to resort to his native tongue and some very old world ways.
I won't go into the gory details but suffice it to say the other five better behaved young boys (at least for that day anyway) learned some words in a second language that I am sure their parents were not pleased with and how to use the bathroom outside in front of God and everybody.
Surprisingly I kept right on being a den mother. Of course there was certainly a lot of explaining to some irate parents and one very understanding scout master.
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