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About Parades and Ferries and the Women Who Halt Them
A Mothers’ Day tribute: when maternal love takes over all sense
When I was eight and a half, my parents, fully and totally against my will, placed me in a Brownie troop that met in the musty basement of a Lutheran church. My oldest brother, Chris, was Staten Island’s first Eagle Scout, and my older brother, Tom, was its second. By that logic, my parents shoving their youngest into scouting made a whole lot of sense — to them.
I had a general idea of what my brothers did: activities involving mud, climbing ropes, and sleeping outside in thin fabric tents alongside animals hooting and rustling through the night. None of that interested me—not remotely.
My parents would not hear it. Scouting was for everyone, and it would build character.
Since I had a few behavioral problems in school, notably defiance and impulsivity, my parents felt scouting would do me a lot of good. (I worked as a middle school teacher for close to a decade, so the universe got its pound of karma there, plus some)
As my parents would not budge from their decision, I went to my grandfather to complain. He held some sway over my mom, and he agreed that I was not scouting material. Then again, he agreed with most things I wanted since I was the…
