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My father, when I was 11-years-old, was horrified by the way his son was turning out.
You can imagine. He wanted to do something.
Get me out of my shell. So, he sent me to Troop 16 in Baltimore, Maryland.
Dulaney district.
Back in those days, rock on Dulaney.
You got it. Back in those days, troop 16 met in the basement of Kenwood United Presbyterian Church.
Now this is a church I was familiar with.
My grandfather helped build it.
So I'd seen it many times but I had no idea what went on in the basement of this building
every Wednesday night at 7-o-clock.
So my dad took me to my first troop meeting. And when I say took me,
I mean he kidnapped me. He basically put a bag over my head and threw me in the back of his station wagon;
the one with the fake lumber on the side and he drove me to the meeting.
Alright. And then he barely slowed down, he kind of rolled me out the door and there I am
going to my first troop meeting and I don't know what to expect and I
walk into this basement and what I saw, to this day, is seared into my retina.
It was like I walked into some kind of a riot.
I don't know what's going on over at troop 16 today.
But back in the day, back in 1974, they were playing a game called Swing the Thing.
Does anyone know Swing the Thing?
*A few cheers*
My god, this was a game invented by an idiot.
The way it works, you get a tent bag and you fill it full of wet rags.
And then you tie a piece of rope to it, about 12-feet-long.
And then you form a circle and somebody gets in the middle and starts to swing this bag around
the floor real fast and everyone in the circle jumps over it.
And if you don't jump over it, it hits your ankles and boom, down you go over like a cheap card table.
And that's how you play Swing the Thing.
Last one standing wins.
It's insane, but that's what they were playing.
Maurice L. was the SPO. Senior Patrol Leader walks up to me and says
come on, kid. Get in the circle.
I get in the circle. 30 seconds later, that tent bag full of wet rags
hit my ankles, down I go, on my face, bloody nose.
Just like that. I've been in the Boy Scouts two minutes and I'm bleeding already.
Now as I might have mentioned, I'm not a big fan of bleeding.
Not a big fan of the sporting activities. It's not going well for me so I
sit out and watch the rest of the game go on and after that game is over
it's time for a new game.
We go outside to the field behind the church for a little game of something called
British Bulldog. Anybody play British Bulldog?
*Lots of cheers*
British Bulldog is a game invented by an idiot.
And here's how it works for those of you that don't know.
Picture a football field, only smaller. And somebody is in the middle
and everyone else is in the end zone.
And at the agreed-upon signal, they all run to the other side of the field and
the poor idiot in the middle has to capture somebody, hang on to them, lift them off the ground for
three seconds or long enough to yell British Bulldog.
You're correct.
I don't want to play this game because they play in the mud and as I just mentioned,
I don't want to get dirty.
But, Maurice L. the SPO, pulls me back in and says, C'mon kid, you're in.
Within 30-seconds I'm face down in the mud. James M. has me by my ankles,
Steve L. has me around my head. They're trying to lift me up,
elbows are flying, knees are everywhere. ***. I take one right in the teeth.
Now I've got a fat lip. I'm bleeding out of my nose, I've got a fat lip, I hadn't been in the Boy Scouts
for 15 minutes and things are not going well.
It gets worse.
We walk inside for the troop meeting and my scoutmaster, the wonderful guy named Don M.
Who was a cop at the time, a detective, says, We have a guest with us this evening,
who wants to become a scout. Why don't you come up here Mike and introduce yourself?
Aw crap, man. I don't want to talk in front of these people.
I'm bleeding and I'm nervous and Mr. M made me speak for 5 minutes
about who I am and what makes me tick and stood up there stammering
my way through. Whoever it is that I thought I was at 11-years-old.
And that was awkward. And then a doctor arrived to give everybody a lesson in first aid and
people started working on their skill awards and their merit badges.
And Maurice L. took me off to a corner and made me memorize the boy scout oath.
Which I did. All in all, this was a very difficult evening for me.
And when my dad picked me up, he said, how'd it go?
And I said, not good.
It was not pleasant.
And he said, huh, you want to go back next week?
And I said, no. And then next week I went back anyway.
And I'm not exactly sure why I did, but I went back the week after that.
And I started earning skill awards and I started working on merit badges and I
started making friends, and I still got kicked around, you know, and I still got
bumps and bruises, but next thing I knew, I was in Philmont.
Anybody here go to Philmont?
*Lots of cheers*
Changed my life. First time I got on a plane, you know.
I went out there, I'm riding horses, I'm climbing mountains, I'm in the Order of the Arrow.
You guys still got Order of the Arrow?
It was a fantastic experience.
I could tie sheepshanks, I could tie square knots and half inches and 12-inches and
next thing you know I got my Eagle.
And, here's the thing. People ask me all the time, you know, what'd you learn?
What was really the point?
And the truth is, everything I needed to know to live my life, I learned in that first troop meeting.
Everything I needed to know about difficulty and challenge and being uncomfortable,
guys, that's the deal. Scouting forces you to confront your discomfort.
I don't care if it's the fear of climbing a mountain.
Or the discomfort of sitting in the rain.
It doesn't matter what. It trains you to do the thing you don't want to do.
And over time I realized it does something else too.
It trains you to like it.
If you can figure out how to like a hard thing,
how to enjoy the thing that everybody else goes out of their way to try to avoid.
You're not only going to get one-hundred and some merit badges,
like that Roland guy. A bit of a show off if you ask me.
You're not only going to do that, you're going to do well in whatever you try.
So 25 years after I got my Eagle, I finally got a chance to get my name in a title of a TV show.
And I wanted to do a TV show about those kinds of people.
I wanted to find the people who deliberately go to do a hard thing and
then find a way to like it.
And that's what Dirty Jobs became.
But look, I'll be honest with you, I didn't really know what I was getting into when I
started it. Anybody see the ostrich episode?
*Cheers*
You guys will love this.
I wanted the first one to be kind of easy and I looked around at like ostrich wrangler.
Okay, I have to put the hood over the head of the ostrich with a couple of ostrich cowboys
and take the ostriches off to the market.
What could be hard about that? The ostrich is kind of a sissy bird. You know?
With those crazy wings, I mean, you know. How much trouble can you get in?
Let me tell you something. An ostrich is a dinosaur.
It hasn't evolved in about 5 million years.
It can run 45-miles-per-hour in four steps. It's breast plate
is 3-inches-thick. You shoot an ostrich in the chest, the bullet bounces off.
I'm not kidding. They can kick with 2000-pounds of force per square inch.
And while I was sitting in the car preparing to go wrangle these ostriches,
I'm reading about all of this.
And behind me, the guy had left his door open on his pickup and
one of the ostriches charged it and ripped the door right off of it's hinges.
Just like that.
Moments later I have to get out of the car and into the ostrich pen
to do one of my very first dirty jobs. And it was in that moment,
it was 25 years before that, just like that, my first troop meeting and the Swing the Thing.
It's British Bulldog. It's get back in the dirt. It's be uncomfortable.
But, it's have fun while you're doing it.
That's what Dirty Jobs has been this whole time.
So look, this is where I need your help.
Alright? I understand that a scout is clean. But just in case, I
might have forgotten the message, I've written it on the back of my shirt.
He's also not afraid to get dirty.
It's really pretty simple and I need for you guys to help me get the message out there.
Now this is going to sound like a crazy idea, but
what about a Dirty Jobs merit badge?
Can we do a Dirty Jobs merit badge?
I'm not a preacher but if I were I'd say can I get an "amen"?
Can we get a Dirty Jobs merit badge?