Guest Blogger - The Dog Walker - Dozens and Dozens of Badges

Shell at Things I Can't Say always seems to know just when and what I want to link up. I’ve told you before about my amazing autistic son. He’s 17 years old and he just finished ALL the Merit Badges offered by the Boy Scouts of America. We are so proud of him! He has wanted to guest blog about this forever and I told him that he could right after his final Court of Honor which was tonight. So here he is, the Dog Walker, in all his Scouting glory…

Adding the link now...just couldn't wait until tomorrow.
Here is his interview with KSL's Sandra Yi.

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=17211431&nid=1010



I would like to say that all my life in Boy Scouts has been so much fun and lots of hard work! It really helped me learn a bit better how I could accomplish my goals. With all these badges I have on my sash I just have like 132 on here. And every one needed a counselor and lots of them needed interviews and special lessons and helpers. The only reason I earned them all was because of help from all my neighbors and friends! So the first thing I want to say is a big THANK YOU!

Now I would like to tell all of you about the badges I liked and disliked. The first badge I liked the most was Cycling, because riding a bike on the Miller’s Sports Park Track was exciting because there were professionals and people on the bleachers. A guy named Rodger Miller was my cycling partner. (His dad was Larry H. Miller, owner of the Utah Jazz.) Rodger made sure I didn’t quit or get dehydrated. I rode 51 miles that day!

I kind of enjoyed the new Chess badge, because it helped me learn a lot of ways on how to become better at chess. I usually just lose, but Friday at school, I beat one of my friends with some of my new skills. Then it was, Scuba Diving, because it was so exciting to be underwater without drowning, but to save yourself from drowning, you breathe through a regulator. I got to dive at the Crater. It’s so much fun to scuba dive, I want to go again.

The next badge was Scouting Heritage, because it told me how exciting scouts would be especially learning about the person who started scouts named Baden-Powell.
Then, Camping, because it was exciting to sleep in a tent at any place like sometimes we campout at my Grandma’s house, or in our backyard or in the mountains. I like learning lots of things at camp.

Next, Robotics, because it had a lot of learning about how using a robot can be very important on difficult locations while working, like in space, the ocean, a volcano, or a crumbled building. Building my own robot was fun. I put black tape on the floor in our entry way and people were surprised to see that my robot could follow the path all by itself.

The next one was Climbing, because I did most of it at the climbing gym in Sandy called Momentum, and it was kind of scary, but fun. Gym Rat and Alex and Princess and Crafty went with us. Gym Rat started to slip off the wall when a rock turned, but Alex saved him which is kind of funny because she is a skinny little girl and Gym Rat is a big strong muscle guy.

The next badge I liked was Animal Science, because I really enjoyed learning about different kinds of farm animals like my grandpa’s sheep. Then the next one was Wilderness Survival, because it helped me learn how I could survive in a wilderness if I ever got lost or far away from a group. It was fun sleeping outside in a shelter I made all by myself. I don’t like lightning though.

Next was Personal Fitness, because it helped me know about how to stay fit and that it’s important to have a physical exam. The next one was Horsemanship, because I learned a lot about horses from my neighbor. I even remembered that I liked riding on her special black horse named Lucky. I had a lot of fun with Lucky.

And then the last badge I liked was the grape soda cap…I’m just teasing. The owner of the UP house actually gave it to me right when the family and I went to see the UP house in Herriman. Seeing the Up house was a lot of fun. The inside was almost exactly like from the movie.

Anyway, there are some badges that I didn’t like when I did them, like Backpacking, because I had to walk three fifteen-milers and one thirty-miler in hard environments like Hayden’s Peak. I didn’t really like Orienteering, because it was so hard to try to use a compass while trying to get the degrees right to get the degrees and paces. Another badge I disliked was Surveying. It was kind of like Orienteering, but sometimes you have to measure the distance and degrees there. Math isn’t my favorite subject and I don’t like having to get everything just right.


Passing off the merit badges with all of you was a lot of fun! The last two merit badges I passed off were Inventing and Chess. Now that I have passed all of those merit badges off, I will remember each one and it will help me in my grownup life. I will always be a Boy Scout no matter how old I am.