Did They Ever Think to Make a "Mom" Scout Handbook?

Scouting was invented by men. As such, they completely forgot that women would be doing all of the record keeping and sewing work. Somewhere in their realm of thought they assumed that mothers are just born with the knowledge they need to get their boys through scouting! They are very, very wrong. So far in my life I have asked mom's if they have any clue about scouting and most don't. We just find ourselves in this painful situation where we have to purchase ugly scout shirts and be excited about sewing on numerous patches as our children earn them. Of course for the first child, we do it out of duty. I found that hot glue at least got the patches on for a while. It worked for Mr. Expecting and I was a dutiful mother and did it. By the time Mr. Appreciative came around the patches had fallen off, so it was basically like he had a brand new shirt. Cool! But, then I realized that I was starting all over again, with new patches and Bo was on to the fact that the hot glue did not last. Fortunately for me, he didn't care, so we never sewed any patches on!


Well, Mr. Demanding is not that easy going. After he attended Timberline, he realized that other boys had better mothers than he did. How could he tell? They had patches sewn on to their shirts! You guessed it. Mr. Demanding wanted them on! So, I took them camping with us. This is where all the trouble comes. Once again, I did not know where to put those patches. I looked all through the book and finally found the best instructions that I could. They were on the front and back page covers and pathetic at that. I looked at the scouts in the book and went to sewing. Fun, fun!
A couple hours later I was done. It's not a pretty sight. In fact I will never point out to Cado how terribly my sewing looks on the inside. (Hopefully he will never compare this with the other scouts.) But, fortunately I got that last stitch in before that needle broke! Isn't it time for iron-on patches? Definitely a woman could come up with that!

The best idea I ever had in my "mom" scouting career was to have Carrie photoshop Dayton's head onto HER son's Eagle Scout picture! That sure made me look like a good scout mom!