Sometimes you have to yank armpit hairs

Not long ago I was talking with Corey Pickett: Renowned artist, Clovis educator, head basketball coach and once upon a time, a Boy Scout.

Just like me.

I was telling him the story about how I got the one, last merit badge that I needed to earn the rank of Eagle Scout.

If you don’t know anything about Boy Scoutin’, one of the things one has to do to become an Eagle Scout is earn 21 merit badges.

To earn one, you have to show you know something and can do something related to the subject of the merit badge.

When I was a kid I kept lizards and snakes.

So the first merit badge I went after was “Reptile Study.”

There are some required merit badges and one of them is “Lifesaving.”

The big thing one does to earn this merit badge is jump in the water and “rescue” someone who is pretending to be drowning.

So one summer I went off to Boy Scout camp.

It was a big ol’ forest reserve with a big ol’ lake tucked away in the Appalachian Mountains.

At summer camp they offered the opportunity to take quick courses to earn merit badges.

One of those courses was for Lifesaving.

I took the course and it came time to perform an imitation rescue in the big ol’ lake.

The dude in trouble was flailing his arms about out in the water.

I jumped in and swam to his rescue.

But somewhere in the process I lost control of the situation, and the fellow dunked me underwater while trying to climb on top of me, something drowning people sometimes do.

I inhaled a bunch of water and I was the one who got rescued.

I went home feeling defeated.

And I picked up a fear of going back in the water.

A few months went by. One weekend I went camping with my Boy Scout troop and I found myself sitting around the campfire with some older scouts.

I shared my rescue gone wrong tale.

“Man, get back in that water,” said a guy a couple of years older than me.

“And when you go in for the rescue test, swim up to the guy from the back, throw your arm across his chest, reach for his armpit, grab his armpit hairs and yank. It’ll shock him. Then pull him back to shore,” he said.

The words gave me confidence.

I found out where a merit badge Lifesaving class was going on and I got back in the swim of things.

Then came the fateful day for the “rescue test.”

It was at an indoor swimming pool.

My turn came to do the rescue.

There was a fellow out in the middle of the pool flailing his arms about, yelling, “HELP. HELP.”

Off I went into the water.

I swam as fast as I could to the guy, approached him from the back, flung my arm around him, reached for his armpit, grabbed a big ol’ hunk of armpit hair and yanked.

“ARRRRRGH! WHAT THE HECK!? STOP! STOP!” he screamed.

“I will when I get you to the side of the pool,” I said firmly.

Actually, this isn’t how the conversation went, but it’ll do for a family newspaper.

And so I earned my Lifesaving merit badge and went on to become an Eagle Scout.

It’s one of the greatest things I ever accomplished

Grant McGee writes for The Eastern New Mexico News. Contact him:

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