Cheerful - When the Food Burns
| Category: | Scout Law |
|---|---|
| Notes: | Ideal at camp when cooking doesn't go well. Can be delivered around the campfire with some humor. If you have the actual burnt food, even better. |
At some point this weekend - maybe this morning, maybe tonight - something is going to go wrong with the food. Eggs will burn. Something will tip into the fire. The pot will boil over, or not boil at all. Whatever it is, I promise it will happen at the worst moment, when everyone is hungry and tired and hoping for something good to eat.
This is a moment that reveals character. Not in a big dramatic way - in a small, immediate, practical way. The Scout who groans, blames whoever was cooking, and refuses to touch the slightly-charred results has made one choice. The Scout who laughs, helps figure out what can be salvaged, and eats whatever's left without complaint has made a different one. Those two responses are not equally useful to the people around them.
A Scout is cheerful. That sounds easy until cheerfulness is actually required - until the pancakes are black on the bottom and it's raining and breakfast was what everyone had left to look forward to. Cheerfulness in that moment isn't fake happiness. It's the decision not to make a difficult situation worse. It's one of the most practical skills you'll ever develop in the outdoors.
Bonus: the campouts where everything went wrong make the best stories. Nobody tells the story of the perfect camp breakfast. They tell the one about the time the entire pot of chili ended up in the fire. If you're cheerful about it in the moment, you get to be the hero of that story.