Last night was Pack Meeting for our local cub scout pack. My wife and I are the Bear Den leaders, and we’d been preparing our bears to present the flag ceremony and several skits for the pack meeting. The last several weeks’ practices were not encouraging. The boys were largely interested in how silly they could act, and were showing no signs of memorizing any of it. We concluded our meeting last week resigned to them falling flat at this week’s pack meeting.
To our surprise, they did pretty well. They got through the official flag ceremony we’ve been teaching them as well or better than other dens have made it through the abbreviated form our pack has been using. They remembered most of their lines in the skits, and did a fairly good job of remembering the stage directions we’d given. It was a rare case of the performance going better than any of the rehearsals.
This batch of boys has really tested us so far this year. They make last year’s bunch look like angels. But after last night we at least have some evidence that they’re paying more attention than we realize. There is hope.