I bought my 18-month-old a knife.

That statement sounds outrageous, but it is 100% true.

Legacy and leaving something to be remembered by has been really on my mind since I became a dad nearly four years ago. Those thoughts ramped up in particular this past year as my father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer and I visited my dad’s grave (only the second time in the past 25 years). I didn’t know what to do with these thoughts; I started writing letters to my kids for them to open at a future date. But I was searching for more.

The answer came from a not-so-unusual place. I was at a regular Boy Scouts meeting on a Friday night. A ritual I have kept up since I was only 10½ and has followed me into adulthood. That night our troop’s committee chairman Tom Dowd was running a program about knife safety.

Mr. Dowd, who I will always refer to that way out of respect, brought his collection of knives. Small ones, big ones, plain ones, and very ornate ones as well. The one that stood out to me was a small folding blade knife with a faux wood exterior that he said once belonged to his father. And it clicked. I needed to get a knife that I could pass along to my son when the time was right. I had recently lost a nice, simple locking blade Gerber knife, so it was an opportune time to purchase a new one.

Getting that unintentional advice from Mr. Dowd was exactly what I needed to hear from the male role model of my boyhood. Through the years Mr. Dowd has treated me and a few others who have gone under his wing as surrogate sons, both in the troop and in real life. Over the years our families had gone on vacations together, family weddings, and had many good times. But even in tough times he was there, after I lost my job last summer, I would run into him on the street and we would talk about strategies and ideas. Just brainstorming. He told me about times when he was out of work and that he eventually bounced back. And no matter how my career goes on from here, I know I can bounce ideas off him and that he has my back.

Years ago, when he got a job out of the city and could no longer fulfill his responsibilities with the troop as Scoutmaster, he picked me as his successor. There were older more experienced candidates, but he knew I could take the reigns and be successful.

It goes to show you that “dads” aren’t always related to you. And it’s a title that you have to earn from your kids; whether they are your own, or if they are ones that you find along the way.

So, I found a small knife, similar to the one I had lost. Sharp and true.  This would be the one that gets passed down to my son. I am sure that if he follows my footsteps into scouting he will have his own knives over the years. But even if he doesn’t, one day he will show off a nice modest knife and say, “This was my dad’s knife.”

This article was originally published 2012. Photo by Lum3n via Pexels.

I first walked into the Scout Office by St. Matthias Parish School in Ridgewood, Queens, in 1981 as a 7-year-old Cub Scout. I may have walked out of it for the last time a few weeks ago.

The building, my son and I were told, was in the process of being sold and we were being given a new storage space down the block. It was sad. But my son was there to see this important place in my life.

In September when we started a Boy Scouts den for my son and some of his first-grade classmates. It was going to be fun and scary. But never once did I wonder if any of these newly minted “Tigers” were not biologically a boy.

And honestly, why would I? They looked and dressed like boys. Yes, their voices are high-pitched and you could mistake them for girls, but they are 6 years old. So I took it at face value that they are all boys.

A few months later I read about a boy named Joe, a Cub Scout from New Jersey who was removed from his pack because it was revealed to a district executive that Joe was biologically not a boy. Joe and his family made no secret that he was a girl who lived his life as a little boy, but one of the other parents let the cat out of the bag to the higher-ups. Since at the time, the Boy Scouts of America had no formal protocol dealing with transgendered youth, he was removed. This is an 8-year-old who loves Star Wars and hanging out with his friends in his Cub Scout den. If I were the den leader or Cubmaster I would have fought the removal. It just wasn’t right.

The debate over Joe’s removal got all convoluted about transgendered people being sexual predators or, on the other hand, the worry about how can the other boys be expected not to do anything to a child who is biologically a girl. Here it is a child who may not be biologically male, but identifies and lives full time as a boy and wants to join a den because he wants to do all the awesome things Cub Scouts/Boy Scouts do. He isn’t some sleeper cell for a sinister LGBTQ agenda. If anything, he will try to fit in as much as he can and not call any attention to himself.

As far as the other boys, guess what: the Boy Scouts have rules to protect children (regardless of gender). They are called the Guide to Safe Scouting and Youth Protection resources. If a scout unit can’t keep a child safe, that is not the problem of the child, it is a lack of leadership and some badly parented children. And what right does any child have abusing or bullying any other child regardless of gender or gender identity? That has no place in Scouting.

People say why can’t that kid just join the Girl Scouts. Well, HE wanted to be with boys his own age and do things boys like him do. I don’t know exactly what the Girl Scouts program entails, but they don’t have the emphasis on the outdoors that the Boy Scouts do. But they have been super inclusive of LGBTQ children and leaders for a few decades. But I digress.

Out of the blue, the Boy Scouts of America announced this week that they would accept transgender boys. There was not a years-long debate like there was on allowing gay men to lead dens. There were not dozens of questionnaires. It just happened. And it was the right thing.

According to the Boy Scout Law, a scout is KIND. A scout is FRIENDLY. A Scout is CHEERFUL. A Scout is LOYAL (which the N.J. council was not being to Joe). I have been reading a lot on scouting message boards about people saying they are leaving the BSA once and for all. Good. Leave. We don’t need people who don’t live up to the Scout Law in our group. Feel free to join one of the Alt-Right’s youth groups. You will find their program is not as full and developed as the BSAs, and while they may have some of the same ideologies as you, you better hate all the right things.

I am going to let you in on a secret. There have been transgender boys in Scouting for years. They just happened to not piss off Mrs. Jenkins at the Pinewood Derby, who then found it necessary to blab a secret that wasn’t hers to tell. These transgender boys have earned badges and nothing bad has happened to them or by them. They were, in the good sense of the phrase, boys being boys. And there have been gay youth and adults in Scouting long before the membership policy change a few years ago. So anyone who is looking to go back to the good old days, guess who was there in the good old days?

Back at my den, none of the parents have mentioned to me that their son was once a daughter. And if that were the case, even before this, I really wouldn’t have cared. So today is a good day to be a Scout, and I hope that Joe rejoins his den (or another den with fewer asshole grownups) really soon.

A version of this first appeared on Great Moments in Bad Parenting.