Ranger Rick vs. Taekwondo Shane

Battle of the boy scout masters

When I moved to Indiana, I quickly found that mid-west life was different. The culture shock started with the food and extended to every aspect of life from the lingo to the way people dressed. I went from being a free-range kid in the city, to being stranded on a farm. I went from being able to walk out my front door and go on big city adventures, to being stranded on a farm. I used to come and go as I pleased and now, I was stranded on a farm. I felt so controlled and choked, that I looked forward to school. That isn’t like me but what option did I have? School was the only escape. I joined every sports team I could, just to have a reason to not be stranded on a farm.

Eventually I came to love that farm and I have gone back to visit the abandoned property where I eventually had plenty of adventures. They were just different kinds of adventures. In The Bronx, I was never chased by a bull, I never slaughtered chickens, and I never ran from a pack of thousands of frogs. That was Indiana stuff. One thing that gave me a better appreciation for living in the country was joining The Boy Scouts. The Way had their own Boy Scout Troop. Every member and leader of Troop 711 was a Way believer.

I never pictured myself joining The Boy Scouts of America. I had never been camping and never wanted to go. I still hate camping. I hate coming home smelling like a campfire. I hate mosquitoes. I hate mysterious animal sounds heard in the middle of the night. I hate how quiet it is. I hate how dark it is. I cannot relax without the sounds of sirens, fireworks and people partying in the streets. I need streetlights and the sound of souped-up cars vrooming by while blasting salsa music at 3 AM. I need to have the option of being able to go somewhere at all times. I am a city boy. Despite all of that, I learned a lot of valuable things in the Boy Scouts. The trouble is, in my two years of scouting, I had two troop leaders. One, a knowledgeable man called Taekwondo Shane. The other, a complete imbecile we called Ranger Rick.

Shane was a legit Taekwondo master. He had this trick where he could hold a glass bottle in his hand and hit the base with his palm in such a way that the bottle would shatter but the base remained intact in his hand. I am sure this isn’t as impressive as it seemed to 11-year-old me, but it was cool. He was not a huge man, but he was strong and he was smart. I wanted to learn to be like Shane; confident, wise, talented and respected. I joined the scouts out of boredom and admiration.

I was a fish out of water and Shane could see that. He was patient with me. He gave us all tasks but made sure they were things we could handle. He might tell some to collect firewood and use a flint and steel to start a fire. He might tell others to go catch some fish for dinner. At the same time, he spent time showing me how to put up a tent or how to cast a fishing rod. Being the least experienced scout, I needed basic boy scout training, and he was happy to do it. He never once made me feel stupid. I went into this experience knowing nothing about “roughing it” and I ended that year knowing how to fish, start a fire with no tools and how to tie a sheepshank. Was I becoming a born-again country boy? No.

The Boy Scout motto is “Be Prepared” and Shane was always prepared. On one camping trip, a sudden torrential downpour broke out and Shane handed us all waterproof ponchos. Another time, some of us touched poison ivy. Shane had lotion and bandages at the ready. Before we went anywhere, he inspected our backpacks to make sure we had everything we were told to bring. We were prepared because he was prepared.

Camping trips were a blast until the snipe hunting incident. We were told that snipe are a flightless nocturnal bird that we will be hunting for the next day’s dinner. We learned that snipe, which tastes like chicken, freeze when you shine a flashlight into their eyes. You then simply pick them up and put them in a snipe bag. We were all given flashlights, and one person, the new guy, is in charge of the bag.

Unfortunately, this species of snipe does not exist. Snipe hunting is a practical joke that goes back to the 1800’s and is sometimes described as a “fool’s errand”. It was an “initiation”, which is a nice way to say “hazing”.

The gag works like this: We would walk out into the darkness, a mile plus away from camp, where the snipe hunt would take place. Traditionally, the bag man is sent off to a remote “snipe heavy” area and told not to move. Then everyone else turns their flashlight off and quickly retreats to camp, abandoning the new guy who eventually figures out that he’s alone in the woods and has to find his way through the darkness back to camp. It’s supposed to be funny, I don’t think it is at all. Unfortunately, Troop 711 of Rome City, Indiana had our own dark twist on this tradition.

I could tell something was afoot, but I could not figure out what it was. Shane was in a huddle having a hush hush meeting with the veteran scouts. They then started to ask the new scouts if we’d ever been snipe hunting. I have a great bullshit detector and self-preservation instincts, being from the big city. The other new kids, Mikey Peaches, Lewie Hewis and Crusty Chad all said “no”. I said “yes”. Shane doubted me “You’re from The Bronx. When did you ever go snipe hunting?” I said, “My dad lives upstate in the sticks. We’ve been snipe hunting in Schenectady”. My dad lived in Manhattan. No such sticks. But if you ever want to know if I am lying, “Schenectady” is my tell. I have various girlfriends in the greater Schenectady area. I am going to be late for work, my car broke down in Schenectady. The check is in the mail but it’s going to be late because I had to send it from Schenectady. Shane was skeptical but chose to believe in my vast snipe hunting experiences in Schenectady. Thank goodness.

Shane broke us up into three groups for the snipe hunt. I immediately noticed that Mikey, Chad and Lewie were each in a different group. Whatever was happening, it was clear to me that these three were the targets. Each group walked in a different direction into the darkness.

My group walked for what felt like an hour, but I am guessing was more like 20 minutes. Suddenly some whispers were happening and my friend Scott let me in on the secret. “When Troy says GO, we are grabbing Mikey Peaches, stripping him naked and tying him to a tree”.

Then I heard “GO!” and a group of about 5 scouts grabbed Mikey and stripped him naked. He was yelling “HEY WHAT THE HELL?” His voice was very Emo. He was ahead of his time.

I couldn’t do it. Someone yelled “Grab his leg, Steve!” I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was in shock. If not for Schenectady, this would have been me. Mikey fought as much as he could, but it was no use. Soon he was butt naked and tied to a tree. Then everyone started running away. Mikey, who I did not like because he once called me a ‘Cuban from another planet’ and was also caught plagiarizing a story I wrote, begged me not to leave him there. He was crying. I stayed and untied him, taking care to not touch his tiny wee wee. I walked his naked ass back to camp. It’s no coincidence that Mikey is now an FBI agent.

Is this fucked up? Yes. No one’s penis should be that small. Was Shane a pervert? No. This wasn’t sexual. It was about subservience, humiliation and control. It was a learned behavior. That doesn’t make it right. People did all kinds of weird things in those days, and hazing was many of them. Shane was a great scout leader, but he was also a cult leader who grew up in a military family. His military-base Boy Scout troop was run by a psycho Vietnam Vet and Shane himself was hazed. As parents and people, we can either break the cycle or continue it. In my opinion, Shane continued the cycle. I often think of this as a parent. I have never laid a hand on my kids; I was beaten many times. I chose to end the cycle. I appreciated Shane’s contribution to my life, but this snipe thing was fucked up.

After a year, Shane moved away, and Troop 711 was now run by a new guy we came to call Ranger Rick. His name was ironic. Rick was not prepared.

Year two of my Boy Scout experience was nothing like the first. Most of the troop had graduated or moved away which made me a senior ranking scout. The first mistake Ranger Rick made was naming me Senior Patrol Leader. I objected to the nomination. When Rick asked why, I told him “I don’t know shit about being a boy scout”. He told me to believe in myself. What an idiot.

For our first camporee, Rick gave us a very short list of what to bring. We were not prepared. Shane would have checked our gear, Rick did not. It was the dead of winter, it was below zero in the woods, and I forgot my boots. Rick said, “that’s OK.” It was not OK. I hiked in my sneakers, stepped in streams and mud and ended up with frostbite. When I got home, I was unable to take my shoes off because my feet were so swollen. My shoes had to be cut off in order for the doctor to examine my flippers. I limped on both sides for weeks. It was more waddle than limp. I looked like a penguin. I still do.

For the spring camporee, it rained all weekend. I was trying to earn a merit badge for making and sleeping in an improvised shelter, also known as a “hooch”. I had no guidance. I stupidly built it on a beehive. When I tried to lay down in my hooch, my virgin butt cheeks were attacked by a swarm of bees. My ass looked like a pepperoni pizza. When we arrived home, I had to let my friend’s mother rub mushroom tincture on my exposed booty. All that did was make the pain worse while suffering the humiliation of sticking my exposed rump into this poor woman’s face. She delivered a parent-line I hated “it’s nothing I haven’t seen before”. Like that made it OK for her to see me naked.

During that 2^nd camporee, the rain was so bad that my hooch flooded in the middle of the night. I tried to go into my friend’s tent, but it too was flooded. We were all soaked and ended up doing pushups all night to stay warm. Then in the morning, my buddy Josh’s face looked like my ass. His face was enormous. It turns out Ranger Rick, living up to his name, threw some poison ivy into the campfire and Josh was directly downwind from the toxic smoke. His eyes were essentially glued shut.

The next day, with my ass on fire, Josh’s face in anaphylaxis and all of us with some level of hypothermia, we were caught cheating at a camporee competition. Rick had failed to tell us that we needed to study for a test on recognizing Native American hunting symbols. So, Rick, who had seen the test, gave us a cheat sheet. We were supposed to walk up to the symbols and tell the judge what each one meant. This was a very difficult test. Our troop member Dwayne, who had already won the tomahawk throwing competition, didn’t want to be caught using the cheat sheet so, he memorized it. He didn’t think to make it look legit so while the other scouts struggled to identify each symbol, Dwayne named them all in about 5 seconds. Then when he was asked if we had cheated, Dwayne said “yes”. We were not prepared, and we were disqualified. Shane would have been embarrassed. I know I was. I was also stripped of my rank as senior patrol leader. I had to take the fall for Ranger Rick.

A week or so later Troop 711 decided to have a spontaneous mutiny. I think about this often. I do not know why we thought this was a good idea or how we had the guts to do it, but we decided to extract the cavity that was Ranger Rick.

The Way College campus in Indiana is built on a natural spring. It is a very wet place. On the grounds was a moat, thick with algae and populated by fish, snakes and many mythical creatures. Somehow the decision was made that we, a group of a dozen high school and middle school Christian boys, were going to throw Ranger Rick into the moat.

I still don’t understand how no one tried to stop us. Looking back at it, this was very much a criminal act. We went looking for Rick and when we found him, we attacked. We tackled him, picked him up and carried him at least 200 yards from the parking lot to the moat. Rick kicked and tried to twist free, but we had him in a firm 24-armed kung fu grip. He didn’t say a word, but he fought. We walked down a hill on a winding pathway and threw him over a bridge into the moat. It was a severe and insane thing to do but to this day, when my friends talk about it, no one ever expresses any remorse. Even when I put myself in Rick’s shoes and think about how horrifying this must have been for him, I have a hard time conjuring up any sympathy.

Even more insane is the fact that no one ever got into any trouble for this. We walked away and let Rick work his way out of a literal quagmire. The only backlash from Rick meeting the mud of the moat was the fact that he tried to invoice us for his watch. We never paid for the watch. We were prepared.