Loyalty, integrity, ingenuity and teamwork were ingredients used to make this meal
Don’t anybody tell the kids who still think adults know as much as we pretend to, but every time I put on my scoutmaster uniform and step up to lead my sons’ troop, the kids end up teaching me something.
This may be related to the fact that I spent just one year as a Cub Scout way back in the ’70s, so a lot of scout skills are only vaguely familiar to me until I prepare to teach them.
I have to keep up appearances, though, so I don’t seem ridiculous when I gather the kids around me at the end of every meeting for a Scoutmaster’s Minute. If you’ve never seen one, just imagine a sermon based not on the Good Book, but rather on the Scout Law of being helpful, friendly, thrifty, brave and so forth.
I keep a few Scoutmaster Minutes ready for the times nothing topical comes to mind. One of the standbys is Stone Soup. You know the story: A traveler sets a pot boiling with nothing but a stone. The stone soup just needs some garnish, he tells people who pass by, and each of them drops in a handful of vegetables or meat that all add up to a passable meal for everyone.
It was in my back pocket as a lesson that a whole group can get by at least fairly well if each person gives just a little bit. A fine bit of wisdom, it seemed, until the scouts greatly improved the lesson at a campout earlier this month, and then acted it out in real life to make sure nobody missed the point.
See, each group of kids in the troop plans, shops for and cooks their own camp meals as a patrol. A patrol that doesn’t do every part of that job well doesn’t eat well, and eating well is a powerful incentive for growing teenagers.
The stakes were even higher at this campout, as three patrols vied for the coveted Golden Skillet that goes to the kids who cook the best dinner.
My younger kid’s patrol had a pretty good edge with plans for cowboy goulash, a spicy stew that’s a troop favorite. They had the planning down pat, as well as plenty of practice cooking the dish.
But as soon as they fired up their stove, they saw a problem. Cowboy goulash isn’t much more than plain ground beef until you add noodles, onion, tomatoes and spices, and those happened to be the very ingredients on the shopping list that the grubmaster forgot to buy.
The hapless cooks stood no chance of claiming the Golden Skillet.
Until their competitors showed what they mean when they recite that Scout Law every week, that is.
Without any nudge from adults, the other two patrols immediately set the competition aside for a few minutes to see if they could contribute anything to make it a three-way race again.
The girls’ patrol found some dry ramen that they hadn’t needed for lunch. The other group of boys handed over an onion and tomatoes that they were able to spare. And my son started cutting leftover tortillas into triangles to fry up as chips in case the ramen didn’t turn out to be enough starch, while his friends looked through the adults’ spices for something to punch it all up.
Everyone was helpful to the cowboy goulash cooks, with friendly thriftiness that ensured all their resources were put to good use. Watching the other patrols being brave enough to maintain a high bar to victory when they could have just cruised through an easier contest was a powerful sight.
Maybe kids understood that stronger competitors push everyone to higher goals. Or maybe they’re just used to living the Scout Law.
Just a couple of hours earlier, after all, they’d taken turns holding a belay rope for each other so everyone could climb a tall tower, a bunch of kids giving up a little of their own time to make sure everyone could climb as high as their skill allowed.
The cowboy goulash didn’t win the Golden Skillet that night, but it was a close contest. And I crawled into my tent after dinner thinking how much better it was than stone soup.
It’s one thing to toss a handful of this or that into a stranger’s pot when there’s nothing at stake, quite another to look around to see what resources you don’t really need so you can pass them over to the peers you’re measuring yourself against.
Sure, doing that leaves a bigger chance that you might not come out number one. But things are better for everyone when we all have what we need to climb as high as our skills allow.
Richard Espinoza is a former editor of the Johnson County Neighborhood News. You can reach him at respinozakc@yahoo.com. And follow him on Twitter at @respinozakc.
