Every troop has got one

One of my more enjoyable church callings is as a "scout volunteer". The calling was issued to help our fledgling troop and allow some of the younger married men in the ward to get out with the scouts. It's a great calling. We don't have to deal with most of the hellish work that occurs between trips, we just show up and provide support on selected camping trips. So far I have cherry picked upcoming trips to Southern Arizona and the Mogollan Rim.

Last week we (the leaders) went up to a local lake (Bartlett Lake) for an over night leadership training camp. The area captured the rare desert beauty that is native to Arizona. A small but clear lake encapsulated by rugged saguro covered hills. Anyways, the trip was enjoyable. We had great meals. We had skits. (The same ones that we all grew up with) We had meetings about the importance of our calling. And we hung out and talked.

It is in these informal conversations around the campfire that certain and more true personalities among friends are uncovered. This is a chance to really get to know your friends who you typically only see on Sundays. I left the trip with a several stronger friendships. I also left the trip having been mildly annoyed by a couple of people. Strangely enough their personality seems to be commonplace with all of the troops I have been associated with. Allow me to describe them.

They are the grisled middle aged men who most likely have served in the military. They have a strong sense of patriotism and all of the virtues espoused by the scouting program. They see scouts as the only true vehicle for which boys can become men. All of these characteristics are very laudable and are not the subject of my criticism. But these men have one consistent characteristic that annoy me. They never stop telling stories. We must have spent 3-4 hours of our 13 hour camp out listening to our military guys tell us about the time when they were "stranded in the Cascades during a training exercise and all they had was a pocket knife" or the time they "took the young kids on a snipe hunt" or "the joke they played on the new colonel at the shooting range" or "the time that one obstinate lughead Johnson boy finally became a man durng the big flood on the Grand Canyon trip". The stories will never end. They all come with a built in lesson.

Since I was the new guy it seemed like most of the stories were directed at me. I did my best to feign interest while formulating an exit strategy. I went to bed early just so I didn't have to hear one more story about the awesome power of the Black Hawk helicopter. If anything this trip taught me who I should avoid on future campouts.

All in all it was great to get out of the city. This has been something I've wanted to do for quite some time. I will just be a tad more careful about who I set my tent next to on future trips.