A Boy’s Cookout That Says Everything About Growing Up Today

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Lake Crescent, Pacific Northwest

We arrive back in camp just before sunset and the boys are starving. But tell me a time when five high school freshman boys aren’t starving. But today, a twelve and a half mile hike up and back to Crescent Falls will do that.

These boys, Robbie, Sawyer, Alex, Adam and Arnaub have been together only a few months. They are the patrol made up of kids nobody else wanted. Their mistake. This band if kids has a great punk rock do-it-yourself attitude that I love. Now they are setting up camp like any upper rank scout; tents are up, gear is sorted and, the fire is going. I lean back in my hammock with my paperback. They have it handled.

Dinner tonight is bratwurst links and potatoes. Great comfort food after a day of hiking. Our deal is, if they cook the diner, I handle the cobbler; my infamous blueberry and Heath Bar crunch Dutch Oven chocolate explosion. A recipe that won me two blue ribbons at the all district camporee if I can brag. This arrangement gives me more time to relax, read, observe and just be in the moment.

The boys are settling in dividing the duties, who has grill duty, who has fire duty, and who’s in charge of rotating the sausages. Yeah, they really said that. They are high school boys. As the boys prep dinner, it’s inevitable the conversation turns to the usual high school subjects; farting, girls, which teachers are assholes and, dick jokes.

I overhear their conversation as they prep the food:

“Mine’s bigger.”

“No way. Look at the girth on this one.”

“You boiled yours, you loser. That doesn’t count.”

I lowered my book and wait for the punchline.

This isn’t about anatomy.
This is about hot dogs.

They’re dead serious. This was about wieners. Hot dogs. Pure, unfiltered boyhood innuendo gross out humor. It’s dumb, harmless, and honestly, though I’d never let them see it, pretty hilarious.

I’m not going to lecture them or tell them to grow up. I did the exact same thing with my buddies at their age. When I was their age, everything was a competition, but a fun one. When I was young and everything was a game. That was the beauty of being a kid.

We’d compete over who could spit the farthest. Who could piss the farthest. Who could chug a can of soda and burp the alphabet. (Fact: most competitors can’t make it past the letter Q without hurling something back up.) And none of us cared about who won. Nobody remembers if Mikey Kaplan or Adam Funk pissed the farthest with the highest arc behind the bushes on the last hike. You could lose twenty rounds in a row and still be one of the gang. It was about laughing your face off. The competition was play. It wasn’t about beating anyone. It was just friends goofing around. Win or lose, you were still one of us.

It wasn’t about medals or rankings or résumé padding. It was about fun. Stupid, perfect, boyhood fun. These boys? They don’t get that luxury.

That’s why I let them tell their dick jokes around a campfire grill. In their generation, every facet of their childhood is now part of a leaderboard.

Their entire lives are graded, ranked, and compared.

Grades aren’t about learning, they’re about class rank.
Sports aren’t about teamwork and fun, they’re about scholarships.
Kids don’t go to summer camp to roast marshmallows and see a night sky untouched by light pollution. It’s been rebranded as “Leadership Development Week.”

We replaced that wonderful, stupid joy and aimless play with tasks and measurable achievements. We hijacked childhood and now call it life preparation. And we convince ourselves that this pressure is love. No wonder stress and anxiety levels among our kids are at an all time high.

The unfortunate truth is that we are raising a generation of exhausted, burnt out anxiety filled over achievers. Everything, from kindergarten to college, is a relentless competition: optimizing grades, padding the resume, nailing the travel soccer team, and curating an online brand. It’s all so serious, so future-focused, that it sucks the joy out of simply existing.

I hear it from parents all the time.

“Not every Scout should make Eagle. It cheapens the rank.”
Translation: I’m insecure about my own kid’s progress.

“AP students shouldn’t hang out with non-AP students. It discourages them.”
Translation: Friendships are fine, as long as they’re strategic.

Even sports aren’t safe.
It’s no longer one team. It’s D1 prospects vs. everyone else.
Highlight reels have replaced memories.

And heaven forbid a kid says they want to go to community college or a trade school, half the parents act like they just confessed to joining the circus.

We’ve built a world where kids don’t try something unless the goal is to be at the top of the leaderboard.

And when they don’t? They crumble.

That’s why I don’t stop the fart jokes or the wiener wars.
Because those dumb contests matter. Those dumb, pointless adolescent competitions are pure, authentic, and crucial. Who can eat the most Sour Patch Kids with out barfing, who can stay up the latest, who can fart the loudest; these aren’t meaningless challenges. They teach humor, living in the moment, emotional risk, humility, and human friendship. They learn to laugh through the embarrassment and move on. That’s where character comes from: getting roasted and laughing anyway. They teach resilience the way no Board of Review ever can.

As a Scoutmaster, I have no interest in building the perfect kid. It doesn’t exist. I’d rather try to raise one who can fail, laugh, get back up and do it again and laugh again. I want them to be bad at things. At least they tried. I want them to lose occasionally. I want them to cook their own wieners, burn them and eat them anyway.

Because achievement doesn’t matter if you lose sight of the human connection you make while on the journey.

And as I watch these boys roasting sausages, laughing through the smoke, one thing’s clear, the real contest isn’t about who has the biggest wiener.

It’s about being comfortable enough to laugh and have a joke. And the truth is, the kids laughing hardest through the smoke is the kid who’s really winning.