PRINTBadges for life
Your scouting days might be over, but you still deserve a badge
April 19, 2007 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Back in your scouting days, life was easier. Accomplish a goal, and get rewarded with a colorful patch to sew onto your collage of merit. It’s classic positive reinforcement. Then you grew up and had to start taking pride in your own acheivements without the promise of a visible wardrobe token of honor. Adults have mortgages, salaries and other marks of merit to act as rewards. Sadly, the accomplishments yield no badges ... until now.
Introducing: adult merit badges.
Awkward ex-encounter badge
Dressed in sweats, you arrive to pick up your take-out for one. Your ex and a date sit directly in front of the hostess stand. It must be a blind date because why would someone that hot date your ex? To qualify for the merit badge, you must not only stick around to retrieve your food, but you must linger, introduce yourself and even request those extra fortune cookies you love. After what even Saddam Hussein would deem cruel and unusual punishment, you are required to say goodbye nonchalantly and go home to eat, drink and text message away your emotions. You survived the run-in like a champ, so wear your badge with honor.
Mapless-navigation badge
You thought it would be like Kerouac’s On the Road. You imagined yourself, your cherished car and adventure. Instead of finding poetry on a journey through the nation’s highways, you’ve endured road rage from grandmothers and two speeding tickets in one ZIP code. Somewhere between New York City and Milwaukee, you threw out your map in a moment of navigational distress. You must now find your long-lost Aunt Uma’s house in Milwaukee. To qualify for the badge, you must calmly roam the streets (your cell phone died incidentally) until you find a kind local who will roll down his or her window to help you. In a moment of brilliance, you find a Sharpie and write directions on the back of one of the tickets. You arrive in time for Aunt Uma’s 80th birthday dinner and have a new badge to show for it.
Getting-out-of-a-ticket badge
It doesn’t matter what distracted you, whether it was Beyoncé’s lyrics or the global-warming debate on KBIA, you didn’t realize that you were going 80 mph in a 55-mph zone. You’ve heard urban legends about how people get out of speeding tickets, but you’ve never had the misfortune of being pulled over. In order to qualify for the elusive getting-out-of-speeding-ticket badge, you must persuade the officer that your indiscretion doesn’t merit a ticket or points on your license. You recall tidbits from the Psychology of Personality class you took centuries ago and accept the blame, after apologizing for your oversight. You use the perfect concoction of respect, fear and sincerity to charm the officer into ticketing someone with less mastery of the human psyche.
Computer-crash survival badge
You type the last word of your dissertation or enter the last PowerPoint slide on your work presentation for the boss. Then, it happens — the mouse doesn’t react to your precise touch. It lies stuck on the page, as if it has been possessed. You can’t remember the last time you pressed Apple “s.” The spinning pinwheel of death is rotating in a frenzy. To qualify for the badge, you can’t give in to technology and allow this glitch to leave you diplomaless or jobless. You must call up a techie and calmly explain the tragedy. He or she guides you, like a nymph through an enchanted forest, in rebooting your computer, searching the hard drive and finding your precious document in the computer’s recycle bin. After promising your first born to your tech-savior, you save twice and print before heading like a smart scout to buy a zip drive.
Handiwork badge
You’ve moved into your first home, and you proudly pay a mortgage. Sadly, you can’t sleep at night. Your bedroom door squeaks, and you want to make sure that you aren’t occupying Casper’s house. You’ve always been a dial-a-fix type of person, whether it involved a broken toilet or a pizza craving. But to qualify for the first home-repair badge, you are required to fix the creaking door by yourself. After a trip to Westlake’s, you head home with WD-40 in tow and coat your door hinge as if you were washing a car. It still moans like a tortured soul, and in a moment that seals your merit badge, you remove the pin and then scrub the pin, barrel and hinge leaves with steel wool. Miraculously, the squeak is gone.
Grown-up soiree badge
After an afternoon of watching the Food Network, you are moved to host your first dinner party. It’s strange how just adding dinner in front of party changes everything. Suddenly, you’re designing invitations that require postage and find yourself worrying about whether you have enough cutlery. After deciding on both a color and an accent color, you realize that you haven’t considered the menu. You are known for your fondness for dining out, not your aptitude in the kitchen, but to qualify for the dinner-party badge, you need to actually cook, not to mention top off drinks and light candles. You dust off a never-opened cookbook and have Betty Crocker lead you. With a little residual flour in your hair, you’ve qualified for the badge.
Return to the campfire for more scout stories.
Comments on this article
About VOX
Columbia's city magazine: In print every Thursday and open late daily on the web.
Copyright 2006. All rights reserved.
| About Vox | Privacy Policy |
| Staff Listing | Comments Policy |
| Contact Us | Community Guidelines |
| Advertise | RSS |
Friends of Vox
Some of our Missourian partners.
