The Fried Bologna Merit Badge

I have a filing system at home that’s so complicated and ridiculously convoluted, I can never actually find anything I’ve filed. Unless, of course, I’m looking for something else. Which is how I stumbled across this ancient, Kodak of myself at some Boy Scout ceremony.

There were solemn oaths and red candles involved, which may explain my beatific pose, somewhat similar to the one in a Sunday School workbook illustration: “St. Bernadette sees a vision at Lourdes.”

The only thing more ridiculous than me being a Boy Scout was that I didn’t just throw in my kerchief, as it were, after failing numerous attempts to win a merit badge — including the one that should have come easy to a pre-pubescent who could already make a cake from scratch: the cooking badge!

I failed miserably, because I couldn’t explain why one should limit the amount of oils and sugars one eats each day — which I couldn’t explain now! There were other questions about things like salmonella and botulism that I didn’t want to know about either.

Despite my utter lack of appropriate abilities or interest, I continued to grit my baby teeth and stayed with the good ol’ BSA for several years because my father insisted that it might turn me into an “All-American Boy,” which clearly never happened.

I did, however, learned to make a fried bologna sandwich — over a roaring campfire — at my one and only camping expedition, held on a frigid March weekend. I made the sandwich but refused to eat it. If there had been a merit badge for my efforts, I might have taken a small taste. But there wasn’t, and it wouldn’t be too long before I gave up the glory of being a Boy Scout for the more practical pride of being a busboy.