Making Men

The year 1980 was a big one for me. I finished primary school and started secondary school, and I moved from Cub Scouts to Scouts. The first transition was bloodless, bureaucratic. There were no ceremonies that I can recall, either on leaving one institution or joining the next. (I was in the UK, where the only place from which you “graduate” is college.) 

But the evening of my transformation from “Cub” to “Scout” remains vivid in my memory. The ceremony took place in a half-century-old wooden village hall. The Cub Pack was lined up at one end of the hall, the Scout Troop at the other. Most of the space in between was taken up with a large parachute, apparently left over from World War II, being held by some adult volunteers along each side. 

When my turn came, I faced the Cubs, saluted, and went under the parachute as it was shaken above me. It was disorienting. I can remember the musty smell, the odd changes in light, and the sensation of the chute coming down repeatedly on my crouched form. Not scary exactly, but weird. We had been told to put our new Scout shirts underneath our Cub sweaters, and under the white waves I changed my clothing. Emerging at the other end of the hall, I was greeted by cheers from the Scouts and their leaders. I made the Scout sign and solemnly recited the Scout promise, which I had been practicing all week, to “Akela,” the Group Scout Leader, in front of various flags. I was then invested with a Scout scarf, along with a red woggle showing which patrol I was to join. I lined up neatly with Red Patrol, after being welcomed by the older boy who was to be my patrol leader. 

The whole thing cannot have lasted more than five minutes. Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of scouting, said that “the investiture of a Scout should be a short, simple, but solemn ceremony.” Baden-Powell chose the archaic term “investiture” deliberately. Being “vested” means literally to “take on the clothes” of a new role. It is the term used to describe knighthood ceremonies. This is not a coincidence. Baden-Powell said that “one aim of the Boy Scouts scheme is to revive amongst us, if possible, some of the rules of the knights of old.”