I was invited to an Eagle Scout ceremony. I was moved by the ritual, yet I also found myself as focused on the Scouts themselves, who fidgeted in the old church’s wooden pews in their freshly ironed uniforms. I sensed that they were waiting for something.
Once the formalities concluded, those troop members rushed up front to join the honoree, and they took turns telling stories and gently razzing him about the early days when his pack was bigger than him and how he chewed with his mouth open. Apparently, he was known to go to bed early, ostensibly to rest for the next day’s hike, but they suspected the real reason was because ghost stories scared him!
I was not a Scout, but I recognized the good-natured joshing from my baseball days. It’s a fine line between laughing with someone or at them, between making jokes that include someone or exclude them. At the Eagle ceremony, the stories never sounded mean or jealous. The Scouts laughed with an energy that danced around the chapel as if to arouse the biblical figures dozing in the stain-glassed windows.
It struck me that his fellow Scouts saw him as far more than his achievement. I supposed he now outranked them, but he was still the same dude they’d seen across the campfire all those years. They had hiked to mountaintops and trudged through mud and made countless memories along the way. This group of young men had grown up together and found something—better yet, forged something together.
Toxic masculinity is real, and the Boy Scouts have had an egregious history of sexual misconduct and assault. I’m not trying to sweep anything under the carpet. But I witnessed a ceremony where each young man was part of the whole, even though only one was singled out for an award. Whether through Scouts, baseball, or some other kind of activity or faith organization, don’t we all hunger for this connection?
His best friend told the last story. There was a camping trip that included a downpour at dawn, and the Scout who would become the Eagle got out of his tent and made breakfast for the rest of the troop, gamely holding an umbrella over the Coleman stove with one hand and flipping pancakes with a spatula in the other. The troop watched for a bit in the comfort of their tents, but eventually all joined him in the cold rain, whooping it up!
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of the book with Wipf and Stock Publishers titled This Is the Day: A Year of Observing Unofficial Holidays about Ampersands, Bobbleheads, Buttons, Cousins, Hairball Awareness, Humbugs, Serendipity, Star Wars, Teenagers, Tenderness, Walking to School, Yo-Yos, and More. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where he is a student of joy.
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