Follow Me Boys!

I was raised the youngest of four girls. 

We spent our free time swinging, playing paperdolls, and making mud pies in the church parking lot. When it rained, we played in the street trying hard not to get drawn in to the whirlpool of the sewers.

All four of us shared the same bike, taking turns to ride it around the block. One night the three alcoholic brothers who lived in a garage behind the parsonage took our bike.

The next evening my dad waited patiently in the dark upstairs on the second floor of the Christian Education building. When one of brothers rode our bike home late that night, my dad tossed a few pebbles on their heads. While giving them a wake up stone shower my dad said in an other wordly voice, "This is God speaking. Is that your bicycle?" They instantly dropped the bike behind the church and ran to seek cover in their garage home."

I had no brothers so I pretended like my boy cousins were my brothers and Opey on Andy Griffith as well.

After marrying Bob, we had three boys and three girls.

What I learned about boys: boys will be boys.

There is a lot of talk about Boy Scouts this weekend. It made me reflect back on our family's short-lived brush with the Scouts.

Our eldest, Robby "RJ" dramatically begged us over a long period of time to join the Boy Scouts.

Our neighborhood troop was led by two mothers. The Den Mothers' call to fame is that they met each Monday at noon before the meeting and each finished off a bottle of wine before the meeting started at 4:00 pm.

They did not like the outdoors, neither did they like boys. What they did like besides wine was cottonballs.

For some reason at least twice a month each scout had to bring a large bag of cottonballs. Cottonballs, accorrding to the Den Mothers, were foundational for crafts of all kinds.

"RJ" Robby, was kicked out of Boy Scouts after one year. The two moms called me on a conference call even though one lived across the street from us and the other one kitty corner behind us. They said not even their wine binges could drown out Robby's behavior. I asked them what it was that now prevented "RJ" from ever going on to become an Eagle Scout. The Den Mothers said "RJ" had talked all their precious innocent Scouts into bombarding them with the 16,000 cotton balls. Furthermore, RJ had told the other Scouts that cotton balls were really summer snow balls.

Our family must have watched Follow Me Boys with Fred McMurray 100 times. We could all say it word for word. In fact I checked it out of the library today to watch it with the family over this Memorial Day holiday weekend.

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