“And now we … we … uh…” Armando stepped down from the podium to confer with Scoutmaster Miller. The two huddled together against the church basement’s wall, seemingly unaware that they were in plain sight of the forty or so individuals assembled. Uncomfortable silence filled the room as the ceremony to induct my good friend John into that venerable brotherhood, the Eagle Scouts, ground to a halt for the third time in the ten minutes it had lasted thus far. Woo-hoo! Spring break! What a great way to start the week, I thought, miserably.
I have no experience with Eagle Scouts, the Boy Scouts, or any other species of scout, for that matter. I am one of the relative few suburban American-bred young men who was never even a member of the Cub Scouts. Maybe it’s just that I’ve missed out on a great national tradition, but sitting in that church basement in Flushing, Queens, I found myself utterly bewildered by the proceedings. Watching rows of morbidly obese, 50-plus men with plastered, thinning greyish hair squatting solemnly in folding chairs reciting the Scout pledge and wearing their old Scout uniforms (including the hot pants), eyes closed and three fingers piously raised, is bizarre, no matter what your local den mother might say.
My friend Peter from Georgetown, who was staying with me for the break and whom I had dragged to the ceremony, had started to get impatient after waiting 45 minutes for the thing to start. Now, he started to point out typos in the program.
“Look, they spelled ‘their’ wrong. See, ‘t-h-i-e-r.’ Guess they can’t be that proud of ‘thier’ son.”
“Look, man, I’m really sorry. I mean, you don’t even know John. He’s one of my best friends, and this is still killing me.”
“Yeah, whatever, it’s OK. Hey, they spelled ‘benediction’ wrong, too, see, b-e-n …”
“Yeah, they stuck an ‘a’ in there, I see, thanks for pointing that out. You’re very helpful.” We sat back and watched as Armando finished his powwow and lumbered back up to the front of the makeshift stage. It struck me that this sullen, blockish lout was neither a poster boy for the ideal scout, nor a very fitting candidate for the position of master of ceremonies
“And now, we ask Father Mazzetti to come forward to bless us here today.” A small, wiry, red-faced priest sprang from his seat across the aisle from me and bounded up to the front.
“Awright, whaddaya want me to do, eh? Say a prayer? How’s dat? Let’s see … We begin in da name of da Fadda, da Son and da Holy Sperrit …” he chattered, in a tone more My Cousin Vinny than papal nuncio. He ad-libbed a hasty prayer, then promptly sat back down and remarked rather loudly to my father that he couldn’t wait for the thing to be over so he could get his hands on the canned-flame-caressed trays of food waiting in the back. Looking around at the somewhat disturbing bits of Americana on the walls depicting fresh-faced, Aryan young boys in short shorts sitting on the laps of much older, leering, similarly clad men, I couldn’t help agreeing with him.
After yet another whispered conference with Scoutmaster Miller, who demonstrated just as poor a command of English as Armando in his several preceding speeches (albeit without Armando’s excuse of having a different native language), the brutish master of ceremonies grouchily called forward the New York State senator for Queens. He was very pleased to present John with a copy of a resolution calling for him to be written into the state’s official history. A well-deserved honor, considering that John was the first Eagle Scout to come out of Queens in years, and the first ever of his troop. As most of his underlings were very similar to Armando in their suspicious appearance and criminal demeanor, I can’t say I was very surprised.
What did surprise me was the incredible diversity of the troop. Armando and the majority of the younger scouts were Latino, Scoutmaster Miller was black, Father Mazzetti was a quintessential New York Italian, and the women in the back preparing the food were all, like John’s mother, Chinese (his father is Polish). The variety of cultures represented stood in stark contrast to the white-bred middle-American families in the aforementioned portraits on the walls, and made me think that perhaps the Scouts were not quite as backwards as I had assumed.
John’s appearance at the podium and subsequent eloquence reawakened the alien feel of the situation, as none of the plumpish Scoutmasters presiding had any evident skill at public speaking. Father Mazzetti returned to “bless the food” to close the ceremony, and the assemblage fell about the pork-fried rice and spaghetti now available.
But the strangest thing I noticed was that almost nobody else seemed to think that there was anything unusual about the ceremony. Maybe it was just polity, but everyone smiled and said how nice the whole affair had been. As such, it seems very possible that I am simply an arrogant, elitist writer, full of Northeast pretension and criticism. I still don’t get those shorts, though.
Chris Norton is a first-year in the College and the Voices editor of The Georgetown Voice. This cat is just another way he’s pretentious.
