Badges! We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges!

You all know who Betsy Ross is, right? Come on, think, think. Fourth grade. American History. Right, she sewed the first American Flag, good job! I think it is pretty safe to assume that we are not related in any way (but I am related to John & John Quincy Adams, so there). Jack just started Cub Scouts and was recently embraced into the brethren as a Tiger Cub. It is incredibly adorable. He is so proud of himself and his orange kerchief, with his little tiger slide. He has been pouring through his handbook, checking out the cool stuff he will be doing, and asking me every day "do I have Cub Scouts today?" And his blue shirt, the "official" shirt of the Cub Scouts. And the badges, his den number and troop number and council badge and round scouting symbol. Oh those adorable little son's of a bitches badges . . . I mean super easy to sew if you are someone who owns a needle badges . . . I mean stick a needle in your eye how the hell do you do this badges. What movie was it where they said "Badges, we don't need no stinkin' badges!" Blazing Saddles? That line just kept going through my head as I sat this weekend hunched over his blue shirt attempting to sew on these damn tricky badges. Actually they are probably a piece of cake for some mothers, just not me. I do not sew. I do not hem. I do not stitch. I do not embroider. I bless the day I found "Stitch Witchery" where you can hem pants and such by just ironing this white gauzy stuff onto them. Of course, after about 6 or 7 washings you have to do it again, but it is still way easier than actual sewing.

First I had to find my sewing kit (if you can actually call it that). I did, but it had no needles. I think we last used it to pull a splinter out of Jack's hand last summer, haven't seen it since. So I went up to my mother-in-laws and got some. While I was there I got in a little bit of a tiff with my father-in-law, who is a pain in the ass, but that's another story altogether. Then I tried to thread it. And I tried again. And again and again and again. Finally I got the actual sewing underway, but it kept slipping. Ah Ha, that is what the pins are for! To keep the badge in place while sewing. Genius! Eventually I got into a groove, and the kids even took a couple of tries. I especially wanted Jack to see how much actual work was going into this sewing, and let him know that as soon as he was old enough and learned he would be sewing his badges on himself. Unfortunately I think I have a few years before he is up for this challenge, but if I can do it, I'm sure he can. Suffice it to say it was a long process, but I did manage to get almost all of them sewn on, and now that I have the hang of it I'm sure the other 2 will go faster. I only pricked my finger with the needle around 68 times, so that's pretty good. I put the thimble on at last but it kept falling off. Damn thing.

I know that I could have given it to my mother or my mother-in-law or my grandmother and asked them to sew it, but I don't know. I wanted to do this myself. It just felt like something that as his mother I was supposed to do. Does that make sense?