I never was a scout, but that reminds me of another one of my amazing but true stories. (Geez, I can hear the groaning already Listen, you're gonna like this one...

When I was of age, I did become a "Cub Scout" for a short time. My mom told me she signed me up one day when I came home from school. I was so excited about going camping for the first time, and learning how to do all kinds of outdoorsy stuff that it's all I could think about for two weeks. My mom got the hat, the shirt and the scarf with the gold ring thing that was so super cool. She sewed the troop numbers on the shirt and some other patches. I could hardly sleep the Friday night before my first official "Scout Meeting". I couldn't wait to hear about where we'd be going on our first real adventure into the wilds.

I got up early and got my scout clothes on first thing. When it was time to go my mom gave me the address and I ran the six long blocks to the "Scout Master's" house.

When I got there, there were about five or six other kids already hanging outside. I hurried over and asked what was going on but it an instant I could tell something was the matter. They were all looking down at their feet and scuffing the dirt yard with their shoes when they told me the Scout Master was down in the basement "Drunk as a skunk."

Sure enough, I could hear his wife yelling at him down there. She was giving it to him pretty good too. He wasn't saying much and we couldn't understand any of it anyway. After a bit she came out and told us not to bother anymore. While she was giving us some cookies she'd made for our meeting she said, "He never should have signed up for this anyhow. I don't know what he was thinking."

So that turned out to be our last official Cub Scout meeting too. And all us kids knew it. We knew there was no one else who'd sign-up to be a "Scout Master". Not where we lived.

But we weren't really all that disappointed. The kids in my neighborhood were used to that kind of stuff.

We were all really surprised to learn who had volunteered to be our Scout Master though. We all knew him, and we were all a little "a scared" of him. He was a tough old ex-marine with red hair, tattoos, and a two day beard and he always tossed in at least two cuss words in any sentence, even if was just to say "Go away", which is all he ever said to any of us kids.

After that, we all figured he must not be that bad of a guy. After all, he did want to be our scout leader, and his wife hadn't ever kicked him out, and she did make pretty good cookies.



He never did that