This is Bob.
Bob is a scout. Scouts by definition are out looking for something.
They go ahead of the others. Often, even they don’t know what they’re looking for. They’re…scouting.
Bob crossed my face seventeen times last night. I assume he was looking for food.
The last time I checked I don’t keep spare food on my face. I keep my chin hairs pretty short. They don’t catch food anymore, so Bob was shit out of luck, but that didn’t stop him from looking because that’s what scouts do…they scout.
Bob was tenacious. He was determined, undeterred.
Which made me want to kill him. To roll him between my fingers until he was reduced to a balled-up version of himself but I didn’t have the heart. I admired his tenacity.
I look up to the Bob’s of this world, those who march on with conviction into the unknown. Way ahead of the huddled masses. Scouting.
I’ve only recently started it, scouting that is, and I’ve gotta tell ya, it ain’t easy.
Louis and Clark, I am not. I want detailed maps with well-marked routes and plenty of rest stops. This scouting thing means that you may very well be the first one to venture down a certain path. That sort of thing used to make me… nervous. Twitchy. When I got to the unmarked fork in the road—I called a cab and went back to the hotel pool with the shitty drinks and the scratchy towels.
Let’s just say I’m no Bob. But I’m learning.
Scouting takes a certain fearlessness. Bob was a prime example.
He crossed the unmapped craggy Mars-like terrain of my face seventeen times. Undeterred by my forest of eyebrows, large, black nose caves, or the chin hairs I mentioned that have the tensile strength of steel cable and are sharp enough to cleave him in half with one false move.
I can’t venture into an unfamiliar neighborhood without Google maps, global positioning, snacks, and my knowledge of the three points on the human body where if you kick a man—he dies instantly. But these days, I’m getting much braver about moving into the uncharted territories of my life.
On a scale of one to five, one being fraidy cat Janet at the crossroads, five being Bob — where do you stand?
These days I’ve inched up the scale to the middle somewhere. You know how it goes, one step forward two steps back. But that’s okay, I’ll always have Bob’s example to keep me moving forward.
Because I want to know the unknown, discover the undiscovered — in other words, be a scout. Because scouts…scout.
Carry on,
xox
