Do Your Best

As you may or may not know, I am a cub scout assistant den leader for the eight-year-olds in our area.  Friday is cub scout day.  Normally cub scout meetings are fairly chaotic, what with nine eight-year-old boys who just finished sitting through a whole day of school running rampant while a couple of slightly harassed leaders try to keep them in line for two hours so that they can pass off something or other.  This last Friday, however, was totally chaotic because the other leader decided to invite all of the boys who will be coming into scouts in the next year to join in our den meeting.  So we had eighteen seven-and-eight-year-old boys, half of whom have no experience whatsoever with scouts and had no idea what we were doing or how things are supposed to go, each wreaking as much havoc as possible in an attempt to impress all of the other second and third graders in the room.  So, throw in the fact that I was holding a grouchy Asher who was missing his nap half of the time and it was quite the relaxing afternoon.

Despite today's insanity, cub scouts in general really isn't so bad.  I will admit that for the first little while I dreaded every moment of it.  Before long, however, I chose a favorite boy.  He is highly motivated to pass things off and is intelligent and generally well-behaved.  He sometimes amuses me because he wants to make sure that you know what he has already accomplished and is very concerned with whether or not an activity that we're doing will help him to earn something.  I think I liked him first because he is most like me.  I was always the goody-two-shoes-know-it-all as a kid.  

Slowly, I began to appreciate the good qualities of the other boys too.  I learned that some of the boys have talents that I wouldn't have expected.  When Asher started coming with me to scouts, I discovered that one of the boys who is particularly rowdy, and therefore sometimes made me particularly nuts, is also really good with babies.  He has an aptitude for making Asher smile or calming him down when he's upset.  Once I had realized this, I began to notice that he also had other talents, like his ability to command the attention of the other boys and keep them focused when it's his job to be the leader.  

After a while, I also began to be more entertained and less bothered by the things that the boys did--even the immature things.  They can be very funny at times (if you don't let them get to you).  One of the younger boys in the group recently told me that it was about a 48 hour drive to Chicago from Utah.  His reasoning was that his family had made the trip and it had taken them two days.  I suggested that perhaps the drive time wasn't quite that long, but that his family had spent part of the time doing things besides driving.  His response to this was, "Well, I've driven across the country lots of times, so I win.  Ha!"  I couldn't help smiling at his worldview.  

I guess the point of all of this is that things that at first seem a little torturous can turn out to be rather enjoyable if you stick with them and keep your eyes open for the parts to smile about.  I'll have to remember that when it's my own little boy who's torturing me.