Guides to being good

I am a bookish kind of guy. I didn't ever set my mind to be that way.  It just happened. I like stories and I like being transported to far-away places and finding out about cells and planets and heroics and cowardology.  I am too impatient and ordinary to be overly transported by ornate poetry, but words and ideas, images and meanings matter to me.

So, when I joined the Boy Scouts (the Girl Scouts didn't want me!!), I knew the motto, the oath, the Scout laws and the related words, documents and concepts.  I wasn't hot to track bears through the forest but I was hot for books. The first merit badge I earned was for scholarship. My Scoutmaster was a wonderful person who was surprised when I applied for the badge:"There's a merit badge for scholarship?"  Looking around the internet, I find that scholarship was one of the original 57 merit badges and it is still part of scouting.

I suspect that most people know that the Boy Scout motto is "Be Prepared".  The Girl Scouts have the same motto. When I was in about the 8th grade, my stepdad gave me an article by Bruce Barton that seemed to nicely encapsulate some valuable advice.  It advised aiming to

1. Stand at the head of the class in English

2. Be accurate

3. Be thorough

Being prepared, loyal, trustworthy, and practicing ten other virtues while doing "my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight" is asking quite a lot, especially what with homework, chores around the house and trying to keep up a budding dating life. But there is more: I grew up in a state whose motto is in Italian and says in English: Manly deeds and womanly words.  My high school has a motto too: The palm to who merits it.

I think I followed all this advice at times and I have ignored each bit at times.