When I was a kid I belonged to a church youth group called Christian Service Brigade.
I must admit that I don’t remember much about what we did there. I know we worked on activities to earn badges, but the only badge I can remember was the one for learning to tie knots.
Coincidentally, the club leader who worked on knot tying with me was also the man who a few years earlier had helped teach me how to tie my shoes.
He — and my parents — were successful when it came to the shoe tying but not so successful when it came to tying other kinds of knots. (Ask my wife, if you don’t believe me.)
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Man, have we come a long way since those days.
A recent survey conducted by Scouts Canada asked members what they wanted to do as an activity with their parents for National Kids Yes Day, and 55 percent of them said, “blow things up.”
I’m not sure what that says about our latest crop of humans, but it might be a good idea to keep the dynamite safely locked away.
The survey also found that 44 percent of them wanted to light fireworks, 44 percent wanted to fly an airplane (or a spaceship), 42 percent wanted to do “wacky science experiments,” 41 percent wanted to ride a dirt bike, 40 percent wanted to get close to a lion or other animal (some even wanted to pet them) and 36 percent wanted to light a fire themselves.
It’s an interesting glimpse into what makes our youngsters tick these days.
However, even though my childhood memories have been reduced to sedate activities such as knot tying, that doesn’t necessarily mean it was like that for everyone.
In fact, I know it doesn’t.
A friend of mine who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s talks about learning how to make a dugout during a vocational agriculture class in school.
They were taught how to mix diesel fuel and ammonia fertilizer to create explosions that would eventually leave behind a new dugout.
My friend won’t admit to trying this himself, but he says he knew those who did.
I guess blowing things up isn’t such a new dream after all.
