A Merit Badge In Failure

And this is before shit gets weird

When I was a little boy I was both an alter boy and a Boy Scout, which made me a prime candidate to join the ranks of America's molested. Unfortunately for my sense of self-worth, I was never inappropriately touched by a lecherous priest, or had my kid-bits fondled by an enthusiastic Scout Master. And though I remained an alter boy until my early teens (I did not want to quit a virgin), my time in the venerable Boy Scouts of America ended all too soon. As I mentioned before, I grew up in the small town of Treynor, Iowa, a rural oasis set amidst the seemingly endless acres of corn fields. As with most small towns in Iowa, conformity was the unspoken rule: your skin should be white, your religion should be protestant, your penis should only enter a vagina. When you are a little kid in such a town, you are also expected to take up certain extracurricular activities such as sports or a job. I was only six (6) when my father sternly informed me how much I wanted to be in the Boy Scouts. And so, with a veneer of synthetic pride to mask my crippling gloom, I enrolled in Cub Scouts, which is basically a negative one-level Boy Scout. My uniform was only a plain white t-shirt with an ironed-on visage of a tiger nestled next to a baby tiger, or "cub." I was also provided with a few iron-on paw prints that could only be applied when I achieved something significant. One night a week, I would reluctantly pull my Tiger Cub uniform on, grab my unread handbook and sulk to the car with my dad, steeling my nerves for another pitiful night of feigned interest and paralyzing boredom. These early Tiger Cub meetings were like Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, if at the beginning of the AA meeting the group was told that Terry, the rambunctious member who inspired hope in the others had died the night before of a massive cocaine heart attack. There were five of us kids, all first-graders, shuffled into the back room of someone's house, so as not to disturb the rest of the family. Fathers and step-fathers all exchanging awkward greetings, introducing themselves and introducing their sons. Us boys worried about being embarrassed, worried what the other boys might think of our fathers. What would be said at school the next day? "Brad's dad smells like shit!" "Joe's dad had a fucking boner the whole time!" "Mat's dad was taking pulls from a flask all goddam night!" The host-father (which sounds extremely cult-like) would set up snacks, read something from the Tiger Cub handbook that no one paid attention to, and then announce the night's activities. Usually it was something incredibly childish and physically undemanding: paint a picture, play a board game (more like bored game, am I right?!), design something with yarn. The early blunderings of greetings and announcements would soon melt away into passive aggression and thinly-veiled competition. Despite random claims of, "It's not a competition," everyone in the room on any given night knew it exactly was a fucking competition. Whether we had to sew a specific pattern into something, sketch a certain scene, paint something, design something, everyone wanted to be the first done and everyone wanted theirs to be the best. The fathers would stand anxiously behind their boys, grinding their teeth and biting their tongues until they could taste blood so as not to let forth a streaming torrent of violent obscenities any time their child made a mistake. Words of encouragement were actually not-so-subtle threats. "Eric? Hey, bud...Let me ask you something. Why would you draw an alligator in that creek, huh? Have you ever seen an alligator in a creek? Why would an alligator be living in a small Iowa creek? Don't get me wrong, it's a great looking alligator. I just have no clue why you would draw it." "Brad, why did you paint a blue jay and a cardinal in the same nest together? Why would two completely different species of birds share the same nest? Does that make sense to you?" Our fathers watched us work with ever-increasing suspense. If one boy's work was deemed the best, than vicariously he had the best father that night. If one boy's work was so terrible that no one spoke of it, then that night his father was also a failure. At six, I thought I could draw as good as anyone. I had spent countless hours tracing underwear models from my mom's JCPenney catalogs, but used artistic license to remove those pesky bras with a couple giant curves of a pencil. So arts never bothered me, but crafts did. Attached to my fleshy, tea cup saucer-like palms, are fingers that resemble a pink-hued monarch caterpillar. They are most adept at nose-picking, burger-gripping, and prepubescent penis-fondling (mostly my own). Yet when it came to sewing, sculpting and building, they were perfectly maladroit. My dioramas and toothpick models usually resembled something that had been dropped down a flight of stairs, and my anguish over not being able to form with hands what was so clear in my mind's eye was only exacerbated by the spark of disappointment that always crept into my father's eyes. Fortunately for my father, I had not yet entered into organized sports, so there was still time before all hope for me was completely shattered. But I still manufactured small victories for myself. One night when the Tiger Cubs met at my house, the activity was to put together a 500-piece Where's Waldo puzzle. As my chubby, inarticulate fingers fumbled through the various pieces, I happened across the Holy Grail: Waldo's smug, bespectacled face. I quickly palmed the piece and furtively dropped it by my shoe, where I stepped on it, saving it until the puzzle was nearly complete, then I could heroically present the last piece and put Waldo in his final place. My diabolical plan worked perfectly. Over the course of an hour, 499 pieces were put into place. At one point my first grade nemesis Brad, proclaimed, "Done!" For a moment all gazed upon the completed puzzle until someone pointed out, "No, there's a piece missing." At this point, I casually bent down, removed the hidden piece from beneath my shoe, and proudly exclaimed, "Here it is!" And in an Arthurian twist, I returned the puzzle piece, my Excalibur, to its rightful spot. "Great job, bud!" My dad said. I beamed with pride. Machiavelli could not have planned it better. Though the majority of our time was spent wasting an hour in each other's houses, occasionally we would venture outdoors on some weekends. On one such occasion our little group was accompanied by a professional bird-watcher out to the middle of a recently-harvested cornfield to identify birds and their calls. I'm not sure how one becomes a bird-watching professional, but I assume it takes years of unemployment. Now, in the prodigious pantheon of living things, I have to say that birds, especially native Midwest birds, are probably the most mind-numbingly boring. I stood in the middle of this field, my toes and cheeks freezing, listening to this old man prattle on and on about birds and nests and what the birds sounded like. If he thought his vast knowledge of birds was impressive, he was sadly, sadly mistaken. By this time in my life I had already seen bare breasts, so any topic other than bewbs did not hold my attention for long. Every so often the man would stop talking, hold up a hand as if to tell us to be still, and say, "Hear that? Do you hear that?" And us boys would listen as best as we could, until finally a bird would chirp or a crow would caw, and the old man would get this real pleased look on his face and say, "That's a robin," or, "That was a sparrow." We were each given a small handbook on Iowa birds and told to go out and write down any birds we could identify and try to imitate their calls. I made my way to the woods alone and got behind the first large tree I found and sat down. Every so often I would let out my own version of a bird call, just to say that I was actually trying. At one point the old man gathered us up and said, "Do you hear that? That's a Bob White calling. Do you know why it's called a Bob White?" Because you just fucking made it up? "It's called a Bob White, because it sounds like he is calling Booooobwhiiiiiiite. Can you hear it?" I listened as this particular bird made its call again. I suppose it did sound like it was saying the name Bob White, but that may have just been a placebo effect working on me. After all, I was expecting the fucking bird to say Bob White, so that's what I heard. Another weekend the Tiger Cubs went camping at Viking Lake in Red Oak, Iowa. The entire weekend was cold and gray and rainy. My older brother, Dale, had decided to tag along as well. Dale was in the Boy Scouts, so the other boys looked up to him. My brother used his new-found influence to poison the rest of the Cubs against me. When they went into the camper to play cards and drink sodas, Dale said I wasn't allowed in. When I wanted to walk the trails with them, Dale said no. I said, "Fine! I'll just walk them myself." "Good! I hope a coyote fucking eats you!" Dale would say. I ended up not walking the trails. Instead, I spent most of the weekend hanging out with my dad and fishing. I hated fishing. I would rather be out watching birds with Bob White-fucking-asshole, than have to fish. At one point I came across my pole, which I had cast out into the lake hours ago just to be able to say I was "fishing." I noticed that the line was pulled taut, directly into the water. "Great," I thought. "Fuckin thing is probably broken." I picked up the fishing pole and began to reel it in. To my surprise, though, the line wasn't broke, it was attached to a fish. After a few minutes of what probably looked like a retarded boy poking at the water with a stick, I pulled in a beautiful sixteen inch bass. My dad was very impressed, and took my picture with my catch. Of course, he made me set the fish free after the picture, and since I was alone when I caught it, my brother and the other boys refused to believe that I had caught anything. By Sunday morning I was ready to go home. The other boys were pissing me off in their allegiance to my nefarious older brother. But things somehow managed to turn in my favor. At some point in the morning, one of the boys, Joe, couldn't find his dad. None of the other fathers knew where he was, so Joe wanted to go looking for him. He gathered all of us kids up and we started walking the trails. When we exhausted the trails, Joe insisted we walk around the entire lake. About halfway through our journey, the other kids, myself included, were beginning to get annoyed at Joe's constant whimpering. Out of frustration and anger at being picked on all weekend, I suddenly said, "You're dad's dead, Joe." To my surprise, the other kids started to laugh, especially Dale. Well, this only encouraged me. "He probably fell into the lake and drowned." The howls of laughter grew and grew, and soon the other boys joined in, coming up with ever more gruesome ways that Joe's missing father met his demise: "A bear tore him in half!" "He smashed his head against a rock!" "Some psycho murdered him!" We all laughed and cheered at our grisly imaginations...well, everyone but Joe. He was nearly in hysterics as he imagined all the horrible ways we were describing his dad's death. It felt so good to be a part of the group again. Bullying is a tremendous unifier. Joe eventually did find his dad, who had found a hidden alcove near the lake to fish at. Joe ran up to him and gave him a huge hug with tears running down his face. I couldn't help but smile. Not because Joe had been reunited with his father, but because I knew I caused those tears. "What a baby," I said. "Yeah, what a fag," another boy seconded. Eventually, when our Tiger Cub handbook had been covered front to back, and a series of black paw prints had been ironed on to my shirt, it was time to move up in the world. My brother moved from a Bear to a Webelos, and I moved up from a Tiger to a Wolf. I got a crisp new handbook, and a sharp navy blue uniform, complete with a little yellow scarf. This was the big time now. No more bullshit puzzle-solving. No more faggoty arts and crafts. We left our fathers behind, and began to meet at the local church, St. Paul's Lutheran Church, every Wednesday night. Our new pack leader was a mother of one of the boys. Her name was Mrs. Coop. Before the first meeting, my own mother informed me that Mrs. Coop had a glass eye. COOOOL! I showed up that night expecting to see someone who looked like Kano from Mortal Kombat. But instead I was greeted by this June Cleaver-looking woman, who had a pair of disappointingly normal eyes. Each meeting I prayed to God that her glass eye (I couldn't tell which one was fake, they both looked soulless) would pop out of her head. But it never did. So for months and months I went to the meetings and half-heartily studied my handbook, partially memorizing passages and going over merit badge requirements, of which there were a fuck-ton. Mostly, I just read issues of Boys Life and laughed at the comics on the back page. Somehow, through sheer force of will, I guess, I managed to start getting some merit badges. Also, I had to start to actively participate in the group. One day my pack had to go all over town selling popcorn door-to-door. I knocked on one door, and a rickety old man answered. "Would you like to buy some popcorn for the Boy Scouts?" I asked in my most please-rape-me voice. "Hell no," the man replied. "I ain't got no teeth." And he grinned a big toothless grin for me. The Boy Scouts also put on a bake sale, where we would bring homemade treats to the school gymnasium, and the public would bid on the different cakes and pies. My mother insisted we make pineapple-upside-down cake, which I vehemently protested. "Pineapple is gross!" I insisted. But seeing that she could bake (being a woman) and I couldn't (being incompetent), my mother won out. Well, of course, no one wanted to eat a disgusting pineapple cake, so my mom ended up bidding on her own cake at the auction. My final humiliation in Scouts came at the Pinewood Derby. A few weeks before the big race, each kid was sent a block of wood, some wheels, some paint, and some stickers to decorate our cars with. Now, my grandfather was an expert woodsmith, who offered to carve my derby car for me. But my father, drunk on power, told me that I had to carve the thing myself. I had a pocket knife when I was six, but my mom took it away because I pretended to rob my little sister at knifepoint with it, so I was not to be trusted with anything sharp. Also, my fingers took to woodworking like Helen Keller took to speech. I basically hacked and sliced at the wood until something vaguely resembling a car took shape. I painted it red, hoping the color would increase its speed, and then added some wavy racing stripes. The Pinewood Derby was held at the school's gymnasium, and the place was packed for the big event. Because there were so many kids participating, it would be a single-elimination tournament. As soon as I arrived in the gym, I knew I was doomed to failure. All the other kids were holding perfectly manicured cars in their hands. All were better painted and better carved than mine. Clearly, I was the only one who carved my own car. I watched race after race, car after car zoom down the inclined track. It was amazing how fast some of the cars could go. Eventually, my name was called. I approached the race track like a condemned man walking to the gallows. A feeling of uncompromising dread washed over me as my eyes took in the other boy's car. It looked like it was designed by fucking General Electric, and was painted a sleek black and silver. We put our cars at the starting line and waited for the signal to let go. When the word came, the other boy's car took off like a bullet. Mine just rumbled forward pathetically. It didn't even catch enough speed on the incline to make it the entire length of the track. As the other boy's car glided smoothly to victory, my car came to a paltry stop about seven feet from the finish line. As people all around me cheered the victor, I humbly approached my car and removed it from the track in disgrace. Years later, in high school, my shop class held its own Pinewood Derby. I didn't fare any better then either. My second attempt at fashioning a car out of wood ended up looking like something Michael J. Fox would make in a full-on Parkinson's seizure. Anyway, when it came to being a Wolf, I stuck it out until the end, and eventually became a Bear. Another handbook. Another uniform. Another fucking Pinewood Derby. Yet, my time as a Bear was practically nonexistent. Fate, it seemed, had other ideas. The summer I became a Bear, my father got transferred to Columbia, Illinois, and by August, we were living in a new town, and I would be going into a new school. I never took up Boy Scouts again. At our new town, no one in my family even brought up the Scouts. I thought I was spared further humiliation, but my father, the sadist that he is, decided to sign my up for soccer. Like, I said, he still had hope for me, sadly.

The Moore You Know: I'm writing a very gripping, very poignant novel. It is a first-person narrative about the human condition and the meaning of life. But halfway through the letter "I" broke off my keyboard, so around page 257, the protagonist suddenly gets very pretentious and only refers to himself in the third person.

© Eric Moore - 2011