Handbook book club, #3

I begin with a life lesson: never, ever, ever get cranky at the world and decide to cut yourself bangs, vaguely based on those you've seen on one or two particularly hip girls on the train. It will not work out well. Tomorrow will be a day of bobby pins and of a hair-fixing appointment with, um, anyone who'll take me in. Geez.

This week's Book Club selection deals with the outfitting necessary for a scout. This is surprisingly intense, buddies.

So, the equipment. Man, the Boy Scouts were taking things seriously. This section reads more like a catalog than anything else, with the advice that "considerable difficulty has been experienced in the selection of the material used in making coats, breeches, and shirts," including sun tests, acid tests, and unspecified tests of colorfastness and durability. At the prices they're charging -- on the order of 75 cents per shirt -- you're not going to do much better. Would you, young sir, prefer to make your own Boy Scout uniform? No problem. You can procure branded Boy Scout logo buttons for only fifteen cents for a coat-sized set.

What's really interesting is just the focus the Handbook has on the importance of using only official Boy Scout items. I'd be unsurprised now, of course, but the notion that this concern was so prominent a hundred years ago is interesting to me. While earlier sections of the Handbook focus on the virtues of the ideal Scout, his sense of community above self, his total competence in even the most unpleasant situations, and his pride in good behavior, this section reminds us that the Boy Scouts were still a commercial enterprise, and they would sue you if you used the Boy Scout seal without authorization.

I guess we all like to think of times before right now as being somehow purer, or hell, maybe just realer. But today, Lord Baden-Powell and co. would like to remind you otherwise.

Update: Life lesson #2. Don't make an unfortunate hair decision, then post to your blog about it. You'll get an anxious call from your mother asking if you shouldn't have learned to avoid self-directed haircutting by age 12 or so. And she, of course, will be right. Love you, mom.