I was in the Boy Scouts for a few years. Or rather they permitted me to hang out with them for a few years, as worthless as I was. I never bothered to earn merit badges, in fact I used to spend the day hiding and wandering during the two weeks we used to be able spend up at a place in the Adirondacks they used to call the Sabattis Scout Reservation, or what we referred to as “Sabittis”. I miraculously attained the rank of “Tenderfoot” and then remained there for the rest of my time in Boy Scouts, another four years. This was the same as some one enlisting in the army and remaining a “private” for twenty years.
I would wander and hide in the woods by myself, for some reason, rather than do what other boy scouts did like learning archery, hiking, fire building, etc. These were all things that a normal boy would be interested in, what a man should know about, things that would give a person some confidence, and self reliance. For some reason I would rather hide in the woods like a fugitive from the law, alone and bored to death until four P.M., when the lake on the other side of the camp was open for swimming. Perhaps I was evolving in my own direction, hearing the call of the ocean in my DNA.
Every day of the two weeks I did this, both years I went up to “Sabattis”. I would join my friends who had been off somewhere earning merit badges and advancing up in rank in the Boy Scouts, learning useful skills, and bonding with other boys.
Once Dick Johnson (real name), and epitomized by his first name, asked me in front of my family who came up to visit me the first year, “how many merit badges did you earn this year Joe?”
I shamefully answered “none” under my breath as my family laughed, mistaking his beratement of me as some kind of joke.
The only merit badge I earned was for swimming. I was a fish outside of water. Every day rain or shine I was there at the docks that we could go to, my crew commandeering one every afternoon. We flabby boys from the suburbs would talk shit to one another for a few minutes, jump or dive in the water, then climb up the ladder to missocialize again. We would talk between swatting horseflies and smacking them dead on our bodies. I would have earned a merit badge in that too if it was available. I had the record of most kills among the members of my gang.
My technique that I developed was this. Wait until the horse fly sank its teeth firmly into your skin, what felt like being pinch hard like from someone who wanted to cause you pain and let you know it. I knew then that the horse fly had his teeth deep in the flesh, his mouth suckling it for all the sustenance he could get. Then I would grab it between my thumb and forefinger, and squish it dead in my grasp. I killed several dozen in one day. My associates thought I was insane, a common belief among many people to this day. At least I know I’m an artist in search of my art.
I even went out despite thunderstorms which sent everyone else scrambling to the shelter of the two man cloth tents that stood year round, atop foot high wooden pallets. I would be the only one at the lake jumping and diving in the water, as rain pelted me and the forest, thunder boomed over our heads, and lighting stabbed the ground in the distance.
One merit badge you could earn was for swimming out in increments of two hundred yards, four hundred, and a around trip of eight hundred yards. If you did all three then you earned one merit badge. For safety reasons you had to swim out with an observer in a rowboat. You could stop and rest in the water, to catch your breath from time to time, by holding onto a rope that was tied to the back of the row boat. When you were ready you started swimming again, you swam and the guy in the rowboat followed alongside you. The guy that was my observer reluctantly asked me if I wanted to do all of the three right here, right now, this afternoon. I took advantage of the opportunity and agreed. I completed the two hundred yard swim with no problem.
I began to get tired during the four hundred yard swim and began to rest, necessitating the guy in the boat to rest with me. I think he even started to get bored with the whole process. Instead of rowing along side me he would pull ahead and row in front of me. When I was completing the return swim for my eight hundred yard swim, I took advantage of the rope that was dangling from the back of the boat, and knowingly or unknowingly, the boy pulled me along for several dozen yards before I had the good sense to let go and not be caught, thus negating my swim and necessitating my having to go through this ordeal again. That was how I earned a merit badge for swimming, the only merit badge I earned in two years of going to Sabattis for two weeks each time.
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