"It's a rite of passage," says Mark Pols, an investor living in Silicon Valley who grew up in Holland. When he was a kid, Pols says, droppings (pronounced drope-ings) were always a part of scouting—and still are. "There'd be various degrees of challenge, meaning what time of night, how far away you'd get dropped, how few people you'd get dropped with, etc."
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Everything boils down to lawsuits. Everyone here is constantly looking for ways to sue everyone else.
ReplyDeleteWe did to pledges. Pledges did it to brothers. You had to leave them with a quarter for a phone call. It was in the 70's so no one called the cops.
ReplyDeleteMy kids and their school friends did this to each other. It was a weird local game they played. 5-10 yr ago.
ReplyDeleteA friend had a big old ranch is South Texas and when we were about 14 his dad would drive us out there with our guns, fishing and camping gear and a little food and drop us off. See ya Sunday! It was a blast.
ReplyDeleteNo welfare office and food bank within a quarter mile?
DeleteThat was cruel!
I think it's a great idea!
ReplyDeleteThe govt is playing the same game by dropping haitans in small towns. Did not have that in the netherlands. Hopefully the kid drop off is not near the haitian dropoff.
ReplyDeleteIf it was part of Scouting the boys had been trained on orienteering, finding shelter, etc. It was a final exam, not a shock out of the blue...
ReplyDeleteIn several Army schools I attended we got a map, a compass and grid coordinates for our pick up point. Average distance was 5 miles but you had to figure out where you were first.
ReplyDeleteOne course had way points. If you found the correct one, it had directions to point #2 and so on BUT there were decoy points within a hundred meters of the one you needed to find.
As cadre it was fun to track the candidates, most kept their flashlights on the entire time. One student brought a Magellan. Couldn't find anything with a compass. I'm sure she made a great officer.
To be fair the "wilderness" in the Netherlands bears little resemblance to the wilderness in America.....
ReplyDeleteDown here in the south we still do it. It’s called Snipe hunting. Ken NWF
ReplyDeleteIt was a snipe hunt in Oregon in the 70's, too, brother!
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