I sometimes forget just how sensitive some people’s ears are. When I’m talking to people my age or younger, they’re used to language that their elders might consider “offensive”—it’s part of our modern culture, much like half-naked models on billboards and beer commercials on TV. But when those elders are in the room… that can have an unfortunate effect.
Consider tonight: I used language that some parents consider unbecoming of an Assistant Scoutmaster and they may be right. However, I look at my relationship with the Scouts a little differently than the parents do. I’ve been a member of Troop 261 for years and years and years, both as a Scout and an adult leader. Since I’ve been growing up around these kids just as they’ve grown up around me, I feel like more of a liaison between them and the other adult leaders. Consequently, the way I behave tends to lean closer towards what the Scouts might be doing.
After the opening ceremony and what not, people broke off into little groups to do various things: some were planning menus for an upcoming campout, some of the younger ones were working on their rank advancements and a bunch of them were getting the cook kits organized. Each one is supposed to have two pots, one frying pan, one spatula, yadda yadda yadda… So a bunch of people emptied their big plastic tubs onto the floor and someone was listing off the inventory—he’d tell them about the two pots, they’d either put both back in the bucket or tell the quartermaster that they had extra or needed certain supplies.
Sounds pretty boring, doesn’t it? Well, it was. The person listing off inventory initially said he’d be smiling while he did it. The smile didn’t last very long, so I hopped over, grabbed the list and started doing it myself: “One small knife and don’t stab anyone with it ‘cause they’ll bleed to death.” It might not have made things move faster, but at least it held their interest a little longer. Unfortunately, it didn’t last.
Once the tubs were organized, the kids headed back to the main room and got very bored very quickly. I went up to the front to try and keep them occupied for a while, but the first thing I wanted to do was tell them about a little sign on a door in the hallway where we were working. See, we’ve been meeting in a church for a pretty long time and those people have been good enough to provide us with a meeting place that has a roof on it, plenty of space for everyone to spread out, etc. However, we’re not the only ones to use the church on Monday nights—the sign on the door said that there was a yoga class inside and asked people to please be quiet. Oops…
So like I said, I told them about the sign, then tried to keep them occupied for a while. I’m not sure exactly how the discussion (read: lecture) came to the point it did—I’ve written in here at previous times that I can go off on a topic and not remember what I said afterwards—but it eventually arrived at my telling them that they shouldn’t be sitting there talking all the time. Even while there are adults and Scout leaders giving announcements or whatever, a lot of kids will just babble to each other as if nothing’s going on. Naturally, while I was telling them about this, they kept talking amongst each other like I wasn’t there.
That’s when I decided to give them a little verbal slap in the face. Obviously, raising my voice wasn’t doing the job, so I slapped on the podium beside me and said, “Sometimes you guys gotta know when to shut the hell up!” Coming up to that statement, I had a brief moment to decide whether or not to include those two additional words when telling them to shut up. I did. It worked. But some people got hit in the crossfire of that slap.
Truth be told, I didn’t think about it all that much when I said it (kind of ironic, given that we were in a church and all…). I feel like I’m sitting on that middle ground between Scout and adult leader; since the kids are used to language like that, it wasn’t a big deal. Well, I suppose I knew it would be sort of a big deal, given that it achieved the shock value I was looking for—I had their attention immediately. Also immediately, two adults took their kids and left the meeting because they were upset about my “swearing” at the Scouts.
After the meeting was over, I drove home, called the parent who left (I know, there were two, but I didn’t know about the second until well afterwards) and apologized. I didn’t mean to offend him, it was inappropriate and so on. He accepted my apology and told me that if I ever got upset like that again, just call him up to the front of the room and he could just stand there and glare at them. Given his biker-esque stature, it would work, too. The problem is that even though I was frustrated, telling them to “shut the hell up” wasn’t because I blew off the handle or anything—I knew what I was doing the whole time.
In retrospect, I feel bad about it, but only because I know it upset some of the adults. If they weren’t around, would the kids have gone home crying to their parents after the meeting? No. Would they have kept listening after I said that? Yes. Sadly, it probably would have had a positive effect, too. Maybe you’ve heard the hypothetical question, “Would you do something if you knew you could get away with it and not get caught?” If you asked me whether or not I’d tell them to shut the hell up again, you know what I’d say? “You’re damn right I would.”
