C-Block Scout Troop

In prison, a group of C-Block lifers sat around one afternoon lamenting their life choices. I shouldn't have robbed that bank. I shouldn't have shot that guy. I shouldn't have tried to sell five kilos of coke to that cop. Then they began to reflect farther back, to look at the decisions that led them to their various lives of crime. After tracing their way through their past, through their criminal twenties and delinquent teens, they finally reached childhood, and somewhere between talks of failed parents and bad schools, they all realized another thing they had missed out on. All of them had either been pulled from Scouts programs early or never been a Scout at all. It was a shot at redemption, they decided, but how could they do it? There weren't exactly woods in the prison yard to go camping in. That's when Inmate #54363-A, who founded a tech company and then embezzled away everything, came across the idea of telecamping. Using a CraigsList ad for a Scout Master, the band of criminals met Roger Acorn, who always wanted to be a Scout Master but had also missed his boat many years ago. Through the wonders of modern telecommunications and prison ingenuity, he taught them everything a scout should know. Navigating by the stars. Making knots with rope (made from sheets). Knife (or in this case, shiv) safety. How to build a proper tent (more sheets). They could build a fire in theory. They knew which berries to eat and how to catch a fish if they ever made their way into the world again. After earning their eagle badges, they realized they had all the tools they needed to escape prison and live as free men in the wilderness. They realized this, but they didn't do it, for they had also learned a thing or two about integrity and responsibility, and spent the rest of their lives in prison not because they had to, but because they knew they should.

- Originally mailed to D. Nichols of Cambridge, Massachusetts