Eagle Scout Speech

Purely for the blogger selection folks, here's my Eagle Scout Award speech (figure this is the easiest way to show it to you guys). I was the first, and am currently the only, non-white and non-Christian to achieve Eagle from this Scout troop. A couple of fellow brown folk are on their way, so Allahspeed to them. It's a hardcore conservative Christian, Republican, homogeneous group of people. I'm a closet atheist with an Islamic veneer to these fine citizens, so I wanted to leave with a bit of a splash.

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I guess I'll get started right away with the thank yous. Dr. Leever, Mr. Gagnon, Mr. Mueller, (etc) for your never-ending dedication. I'd like to especially thank Dr. Grove and Mr. McDonald, because without their guidance in my first months of scouting I would never have made it here. Mr. Mayo and Mr. Jones, thank you for your help with planning my project. Without your direction, it would never have happened. And of course, thank you Mr. Jungeblut for starting me off on the right foot.

Next, I'd like to thank all my friends for helping with my project when everything seemed to be going wrong. Thank you Athar Uncle for your invaluable advice and generous lending of tools. Thanks most of all to my family, to my mom, my sister, my grandparents, and of course my dad, who was instrumental in motivating me finish my project. And finally, thank you, Ms. Cox, for getting me into college.

To all of Troop 642—thanks for the experience. I was trying to remember the one thing that will stick with me most for the rest of my life, and I realized that it is something that I have already been doing subconsciously for a while now. When we were setting up camp upon arrival at Fort AP Hill for the 2005 Jamboree, everyone was tired and sweaty in the intense sun, stifling humidity, and hellish heat. I remember, fondly, when it took me longer than three seconds to tie a taut line hitch on one of the fly stays, Mr. Gagnon erupted: “IT DOESN'T TAKE TWENTY FREAKING MINUTES TO TIE A TAUT LINE!” Thinking back, any time I have needed to tie rope to anything, I've used that taut line. I've used it in physics labs on multiple occasions, including one time when the rope did what it was supposed to and slipped, ruining the first trial of the experiment. I even once implemented the taut line to make intersecting loops at the ends of two ropes to join the ropes into a single long one, rather than using the square knot. And, most recently, I used the magical knot to outline my Eagle Project with twine. Of course, it slipped again, but thank you for that, Mr. Gagnon.

Thank you to all the friends, family, and strangers who made it out here tonight to help us celebrate. I tried to think of an anecdote with profound implications, but I came up empty, so tonight I will leave you with a couple of quotes. The first is from a piece by the distinguished composer, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist Sly Stone. He said, paraphrasing, that you have to be thankful to the lord, but thoughtful too. A notable suggestion, but then Talib Kweli, one of the greatest poets of our day, comes along thirty five years later and makes it clearer: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Just because the lord is my shepherd don't mean I gotta be no sheep.” Thank you and good night.

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For what it's worth, the troop leaders had a good laugh at this. Guess it went over their heads.