About my project... It was pretty extreme and most guys don't do things that are as intense as it was. But, I wanted to do something that counted and that made me feel like I'd done something good. My dad was on the council's Eagle Board of Review for a while and so I got to see a lot of projects come and go. Lots of benches, birdhouses and bookshelves. Those are all nice, but they seemed commonplace. I wanted a challenge, so I found one. As a plus, it gave a lot of guys in my troop and other troops a chance to get some serious service hours, and boy did they earn them. It gave me a chance to really lead people, not just scouts. And, it was all worth it when I saw the smiles on the kids faces when they finally got to play on it. Nobody has to do a big project, but I wanted to.

I love OA. I got into it because it was one of the few groups that let you do stuff until you were 21, and so I made a lot of good friends in there from a wider area than had I just stuck with doing stuff with my troop all the time. Instead of just knowing Scouts in the general Oklahoma City area, I've come to know guys all over Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas and Arkansas.

Tribe of Mic-O-Say shares a lot in common with OA, but we don't have the ingrained Indian lore that it has. With only 3 ranks and 3 ceremonies, it's easy to get away from that aspect in OA.

Now as an adult, I've stepped back from leadership roles in scouting and am letting my younger friends take over and do things.