Fun in downtown Athens, Alabama.
For those who are interested, here are the original pictures from the May 1962 copy of Boys’ Life:
For me, the latest news is still an uneasy thought to accept. Knowing now what I didn’t know then, that there were gay boys in my school, one who knew he was gay at 12…he used to tickle me and giggle because tickling caused me to get an erection. He never touched my erection but he did admit getting a thrill tickling me, which I avoided getting tickled by him even more after his admission.
He was in Boy Scouts with me. We earned more than one merit badge together, both of us interested in nature, studying birds and wildlife habitats, taking notes and sharing with other Boy Scouts.
I admit I was attracted to his intellect but I was not sexually attracted to him.
He went on to earn academic honours at CalTech as well as achieved business accolades.
I sit here and look at my Boy Scout achievements, including the milestone of Eagle Scout:
I guess the Boy Scouts of America have adjusted to a changing United States of America.
What will the troop leaders face now that openly-gay Scouts are officially accepted?
Will they have to worry not only about boys getting knife cuts while whittling and third-degree burns from roasting marshmallows but also listen carefully at night to make sure a curious gay boy will not make a pass at a fellow tentmate?
Will a tickler of the 1970s attempt a kiss, instead, in the 2010s?
My wife and I have briefly discussed this issue — when we did, my scalp felt on fire, which told me this is important for me to consider further.
How do I separate the code of honour I upheld as a Boy Scout — reconciling that the fact that homosexuality is a physical/mental wiring issue rather than a[n] [im]moral act against the fact that boys become sexually active in their early teens, some more active than others — from the genetic code that children are born with?
It is not a simple matter that I can easily and simply dismiss.
Are all openly-gay boys effeminate?
If so, will they and their parents push for sewing/fashion and home decorating Boy Scout merit badges?
Regardless of gender preference/attraction, Boy Scouts is about learning new skills, including wilderness survival but also skills in the civilised world, such as computers and citizenship.
I have always been willing to hold discordant views in my thoughts and these definitely clash: I accept gays and lesbians as friends even though a part of me sees anything but a heterosexual relationship as unnatural, a sign that nature has a way of putting the brakes on overpopulation.
However, building rockets and exploring the cosmos is an unnatural act of sorts in my thoughts yet I want our species to create networks of beings/technology that branch out from the solar system and into the neighbouring sections of our galaxy.
Unnatural is a word to describe a condition of one or more sets of states of energy in flux.
I will think more about this and hope to record here my thoughts on the matter.
Until next time, my wife and I will continue to share our lives together, including a tour of Air Force One a couple of years ago.
Au revoir!
To paraphrase: “if we can’t assimilate ’em, we assassinate ’em.”
Message received loud and clear, boss — our exterminators have been deployed, our mission clean and pure as water.
The FBI announced today they have hired Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jet Li, and Jackie Chan to train their “field” (torture) agents to protect themselves against “knife” (i.e, banana) attacks using simple martial arts techniques.
Murray Co. courthouse.
If I had served under President Obama (pun fully intended), I would want to kill myself, too. The guy’s a plague on all our houses — a disgrace to the uniform, worse than Bill Clinton, hardly better than Jimmy Carter, less of a fop than Teddy Roosevelt, better suited to improving Tiger Woods’ golf game than running a country. Quit like an honourable man and feel free to tell us anything you want after that.
I have waited so long to share all these thoughts and feelings that I have heard and read from my father, mother and friends on the right. Thanks, Barack, for giving me the opportunity to say these things. May you enjoy your retirement as soon as possible. Clinton might still have a law office in Harlem (with a spare bed to share with you and his interns; cigars not allowed anymore, of course) if you feel compelled to provide community service for which you were so well trained and, word has it, might have stuck to one job and excelled at it.
Pope Francis has the right idea — we are all the 99% relatively poor — let us use some of the funny money floating around in the funny money economy and serve the poor rather than pander to the rich folk like Obama and his Chicago gang of thugs.
Sweet dreams, dearies. Don’t forget to look out for bedbugs — their bite is much more vicious.
Poor Hillary. She keeps riding the coattails of scandalous clowns who pretended to be powerful. Such a bad judge of character she is, eh?
But Bill G is right — playing games with politicians is too easy because they don’t make anything tangible.
How ’bout an H2G2 history lesson to divert our attention, instead?
How many times have I read my conservative/Republican friends say “ho hum, what a worthless bum” whenever the BO in the White House speaks in repetitively boring “I’m an angry black man and will show it by once again not accomplishing anything constructive” figurehead speech?
Until now, I had written off my friends’ comments as just so much sour grapes.
But they’ve shown me the light.
They’re right. There is something rotten in the state of Denmark and it’s the stench from Washington, DC, floating over the Atlantic, carrying the smell of BO, his West Coast cronies, and their immature, holier-than-thou attitude.
May BO’s technology geeks watch as their inventions cook this planet.
May all the men with female friends/relatives who’ve suffered sex abuse in the U.S. military, and those who were killed/maimed by the Boston bombers — radical Islamic terrorist immigrants enjoying government welfare (but not yet Obamacare?) while BO was in office — remember it was Barack Hussein Obama who let them down, now and forever more, amen.
President Obama, you have let us all down. May history teach us this lesson: a fast-tracked leader is no leader at all, only a cardboard cutout of false hope and change. Some will try to keep hanging their hat on that image.
I am an angry white guy who is very pissed off right now, looking for every unturned rock to defend my parents’ opinion of the POS POTUS in office.
We will, however, continue brain research and other positive pursuits, such as increased fuel mileage, so you haven’t been a complete waste of breath and expensive vacations for your wife and kids. It ain’t much but it’ll have to do.
One day, a grown up kid like me who loves Tricky Dick Nixon will still see “Dodge responsibilities” Barry Obama as his favourite president and visit the Obama Library in Kenya, or Malaysia, or…
Scary, huh?
treetrunkdings 