“A member of an elite paramilitary organization: Eagle Scouts.” – Red Dawn
I have a friend who has a trophy wife. It wasn’t first place.
I once had a position with a certain paramilitary organization aimed at youth who identified as were boys. I have always raised my own children by a simple rule: if they thought they were old enough to try something, they probably were. A related rule was: if I thought they were old enough, I’d make them try something. Especially if it made my life easier.
Five-year-olds can do drywall. I mean, through the tears, that is.
Obviously, this got mixed results. The judgment of a ten-year-old is not as good as that of even a boy two years older. When I asked Pugsley to warm up the car one winter evening when he was 10 or so, while sitting in the front seat he did a neutral drop at high RPM. Right into the house.
Live and learn. Weirdly, we managed to put the wall back into place (mostly) with a mallet. Was I irritated he ran a car into our house? Certainly. But, independence has costs.
Learning is never free.
I promise to stop using police-related puns. I’ll give them arrest.
When I later became a paramilitary organization leader to other boys in addition to mine, I found something interesting: most parents hadn’t taught the boys even rudimentary life skills or woodcraft. Lessons I had learned just tromping around Wilder Mountain seemed like magic to them. It made sense. We don’t really live in a world that values those skills.
In my first campout with the boys, one of the skills we focused on was simple: building a fire. To my amazement, half of the boys hadn’t done that, ever. One of the oldest boys on the campout was around sixteen. He worked on his fire for over an hour. In that hour, he learned a lot of ways to not start a fire. Finally, he got it going.
Me: “Okay, good job! You can put it out now.”
He didn’t. It was the first fire he’d ever made, and he stoked and babied that fire like it was the first one that mankind had ever mastered. And, for him, that was true. He kept that fire going for hours.
There was a fire at Goodwill® today. No injuries, just some secondhand smoke exposure.
I learned as much from the boys as they learned from me. In this moment I learned a real, hard fact of life. When that boy made his first fire, he didn’t need a badge. He didn’t need a medal. What did he need?
Nothing. He had struggled for an hour to make that fire. His reward wasn’t anything outside of him. His reward was the skill. In a sense, that real, physical fire had started a metaphorical fire in him.
Give that a thought. Soccer leagues give children participation trophies so their feelings aren’t hurt. I’m not sure anyone understands the damage done by those hunks of gilt plastic. The trophies are cheap, but the sense of entitlement created by them lasts a lifetime.
When a man makes a fire, or wins a judo match, or does something that is his and his alone, the medal isn’t the accomplishment, the medal is the acknowledgment.
A child who grows up in Montana who can ride a horse, skin an elk, and shoot a rifle straight and true doesn’t need a medal. They don’t need outside affirmation. They are who they are.
Arnold was a great gardener. They called him the Germinator.
That’s the rule of the Greatest Game. Struggle. Learn. Master. Repeat.
Missing? A trophy. Why is it missing? It’s simply not necessary.
We live in a culture where people don’t have to struggle. I imagine the only meal missed in recent memory by readers here is one they chose to miss. Food in this day may be more expensive than it was last year, but it’s still everywhere. The calories to feed a person are plentiful.
So why are video games popular?
They’re popular because we’re wired to Struggle, Learn, Master, and Repeat. Deep down inside, though, we know it’s only a pale shadow of the Greatest Game.
Technology has improved so much that it has interfered with the programming that is at the core of what it means to be human. To be the best that we can be, the struggle has to be worth our time. The game has to be worth playing.
No matter how bad you think you are, Moses was worse. He broke all of the Commandments at once.
I think that a lot of the dysfunction in our society stems to that – people who would have mattered to their tribe back in 200 B.C. or 1,000 A.D. are simply playing their parts in big machines. Our technology has changed our culture. Our culture has changed our roles in society.
These changed roles weren’t made with men in mind, they emerged from the technology. Even 140 years ago, the typical farmer and his family often had to fabricate many if not most of the things that he depended on. That led to independence.
The farmer was free in a way that people chained to an international financial system and a technological corporate machine aren’t. He was free to succeed, or free to fail.
What mattered was how he played the Greatest Game.
We’re still here. We can play the Greatest Game, because, surprisingly, it’s still out there. Each day we have the chance: Struggle, Learn, Master and Repeat.
Me? I’m still learning to make a fire or two.
My son and daughter were both taking Tang Su Do classes, and participation in the tournaments was mandatory. In his third tournament, the wee lad was the youngest in his age group to compete, and got totally dominated by the much larger boys in sparring. Yet, because there were only three competitors in the group, he still got a bronze medal. The look of disgust on his eight year old face was heartbreaking. He stopped going to class right after that, and threw away the medal.
Yup. Pugsley never picks up medals like that, either. He just leaves ’em at the podium. One of my most precious medals was a second place. Longer story.
Great article, John. No comment I can add to it to make it better.
Well, except maybe a joke I remembered. Moses comes down from the mountain and back to his people. “I have good news and bad news” he tells them. “I’ve got Him down from twelve to ten, but adultery is still in”.
On a somewhat related topic that may surprise some that know a little about my religious views, I FINALLY got tags for my recently purchased new ride, a beautiful little fifteen-year old convertible. In Alabama there are two primary tag choices, the standard one:
https://revenue.alabama.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/LicencePlate_Standard_2014Standard5yr.jpg
and the cheapest of the specialty ones, which USED to be the standard one and now has a one-time $5 extra fee:
https://revenue.alabama.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/LicencePlate_Standard_2014Standard5yr.jpg
I paid the extra to display “God Bless America”. Right now, she needs all the help she can get.
Now that I’m looking for it out on the road, this is a very rare tag to see.
Ack. Still no edit button….
https://revenue.alabama.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/LicensePlate_Specilaty_GodBlessAmerica2013.jpg
Nice! Now I’ll have to find mine . . . . (car, not tag)
Very nice. I think I can imagine it 😉
I am a retired blogger from Israel(IDF),I have a new FUNNY/HUMOR blog: funnylinksblog.wordpress.com and I am interested in a Reciprocal Links with your great blog,if it’s possible,please.I think Humor/Satire is important to people,anywhere,anytime,any blog,also in serious and political blogs or any stuff…Best wishes,David.
So, do you read this? I’m betting not.
Never having been a member of an elite paramilitary force, I still rely on matches and paper. For Xmas a couple years ago the Kid gave me a flint and fiber fire-starter kit, but I’m saving it for when I have an hour to kill.
Starting a fire with flint and steel is a whole lot easier with a drop or two of gasoline on your tinder. But it’s still not trivial.
Char-cloth. Just sayin’
Nice! Matches are okay. The kid had them. Heck, he had like 100 of them.
9V battery and steel wool work better, and are wind resistant.
But not as visceral.
Yeah! I first saw that on . . . Johnny Carson. Mom was lucky we didn’t have steel wool around the house . . . .
I watched a neighbor, who is probably in his late thirties, use a tractor to pile up several trees, allow them to dry over a few weeks, and finally start the large pile on fire. Liberal amounts of diesel were used to help, and the fire was spectacular…for about twenty minutes. The diesel burned away, the fire slowly died, and was out before nightfall.
He tried again in a few weeks. This time the fire caught, but he didn’t constantly feed the fire. By morning, the larger limbs that caught were out.
Meanwhile, I had three trees to burn, which I had cut in pieces that could be hauled by my brother-in-law’s tractor. They were still green, so I had to use some diesel to start the process. I constantly fed the smaller branches into the fire, and was soon rewarded with a “heart’, hot enough to melt aluminum.
Over the next two days, I constantly pushed the larger logs into the heart, kept a close eye on the process, and eventually had only a large burned spot to show where the fire had been. After it all cooled, I raked the ashes into the surrounding yard, and the first rain flattened the area.
A few weeks later, my neighbor started his fire again. From watching, I’m thinking he used about ten gallons of diesel to get it started. It burned hot, had a good heart of hot coals, and by the next morning, was smoldering. By afternoon, the fire was gone, and much of the pile remained. The pile is still there, and I’m thinking he’ll try again in another few weeks, or months.
I really don’t know much about my neighbor, but observation doesn’t seem to be his best quality. I give him an “A” for effort, but an “F” for paying attention.
Ha! Our last bonfire the flames were about 20′ high (for about 20 minutes). Everything burned to ash.
Which was nice.
Staring a fire is so easy, even a cave man can do it.
(Tip your waitresses. Try the veal.)
Where most parents screw that pooch is not teaching their kids about When and Where.
As my older brother proved before I was born, and dad’s shop had the scorch marks to prove it.
(Mind you, this is the same older brother who, years before that, tried to give my dad a hand – literally – by brushing the sawdust away from the table saw. But fortunately, the doctors were able to sew it back on, since he’d only cut it half-off. No, really. he was even a screw-up at being a screw-up. Come to think of it, maybe that’s why he lit the shop on fire later on. But the gift he gave us younger brothers was priceless: endless slack for life, because all of us knew who the Family Idiot was, and with such a low bar, it was easy for us later editions to shine by comparison our entire lives.)
Reminds me of a story my Dad told me of going steelhead fishing with a guy he just met.
Seemed friendly enough. Dad noticed the guy had several fingers missing, so he asked what he did for a living. Guy said he was retired.
“So, what DID you do for a living?”
“I taught wood shop in high school.”
Dad never fished with that guy again.
Ha! You must have met Pugsley. He’s a great kid, but has this weird accident distortion field that follows him around. If it can get strange, it will get strange around here, but the accidents are always benign and hilarious.
I am terrible about trying new things, I don’t like screwing it up so I just don’t. My wife? She will tear anything apart and try. Some schmuck came to repair our furnace and was telling her that we needed a new one because of a cracked something or other, but she smelled B.S. and figured out a) he was lying and b) that all we needed were new burners, which she figured out how to install and saved us a couple grand.
Nice!
A cracked heat exchanger? Sounds silly, but good for a quick sale.
“They’re popular because we’re wired to Struggle, Learn, Master, and Repeat. Deep down inside, though, we know it’s only a pale shadow of the Greatest Game”.
That’s why it’s called the human RACE.
10 years ago I used to joke about buying a plow and a mule. Not so funny anymore but may be even more necessary.
Speaking of plows, I recently watched the first episode from the TV program “Connections” The episode was called “The Trigger Effect”. Given the recent talk of the Cyber Polygon exercise (cyber attacks/ grid attacks), this is pretty prescient. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=%22the+Trigger+Effect%22+Connections&&view=detail&mid=AA36F47935283F16A701AA36F47935283F16A701&&FORM=VDRVSR
James Burke is the Einstein of science history.
Get all his books, and DVDs of all his shows, if you can.
Just listening to him or reading him for an hour is certified to raise one’s IQ 10 points.
Five stars *****, unhesitatingly recommended.
Agreed. Saw him on a speaking tour once. Very, very insightful about the future of tech. “The future lies not in what you know, but how fast you can learn.”
10 out of 10. Saw it when I was a wee lad. And saw James Burke on tour once. Awesome dude.
Yup. Farming is looking to be the 2024 version of the .com bubble.
The statement about elk hunting hit home…that one has passed through the generations in my family.
Yup. And ours. Perhaps on the same ranges?
Regarding the campout where you discovered half of the boys had never built a fire. I saw something similar the times I accompanied my boys on campouts: an amazing number of scouts and scout leaders (including some that had been Eagle Scouts) had no real idea of how to start a fire. Several times, they would come without basic tools like a hatchet for making kindling or materials to use as tinder. They seemed to think that they could randomly throw chunks of wood into a pile in a firepit and just hold a match or lighter to it.
It’s easy to revert. Since I built (I’m guessing) 1800 fires between the ages of 8 and 18, it’s easy to get complacent. I’m thinking my boys haven’t done 10 fires in the last year.
Of course, sometimes you just need to start the fire with gasoline just to have fun!
Yup. And it makes wet wood dry, very quickly.