Knee socks and packing boxes

“They’re like ants,” my friend Andy said. “Occasionally they all congregate in a big area, but mostly they’re just alone or in these small groups of three or four, raiding the Doritos and soda at the Village Pantry on Third and Jordan.”

He was, of course, talking about the 7,000 members of the National Order of the Arrow Conference, which is going on in Bloomington this week.

Basically, if you’ve left your house in the last week, you’ve seen them and, let’s face it, probably made fun of them. Arrowmen, as they are called, belong to an honor society within the Boy Scouts of America that recognizes those Scouts who “best exemplify the Scout Oath and Law in their daily lives.” They’re responsible for things like extra camping and service requirements, according to one I spoke with on the street. They also indulge in the occasional feathered-headdresses-donning afternoon romp, if my eyes haven’t mistaken me.

The really interesting thing about them, though, is that most of them are older Scouts. According to their Web site, among the Arrowmen, a “youth” is considered a person 21 years old or younger, unlike the 18-years-old cut-off the Boy Scouts impose. Adults can also apply and many do, though their prime responsibility is to serve as role models for the youth members.

This brings me to the fascinating juxtaposition of having the Arrowmen here this week, of all weeks. For many graduating seniors who stuck around for the summer to relax or take classes, these are some of our last few days in Bloomington. We are effectively being pushed out into the world, told it is time to grow up, while 7,000 grown and growing men are here in Bloomington – wearing knee socks and, one could argue, furiously holding onto childhood and the activities they enjoyed as children.

While the Arrowmen “take over our campus” as the particular one I spoke to put it, IU’s seniors are busy filling cardboard boxes with textbooks and stuffing toothpaste into the holes in our walls. New tenants are moving into our apartments and houses. If we’re lucky, they’ll keep our paint colors, a small indicator that we were there once, that we lived our lives there – for awhile anyway.

It’s kind of nice to realize that, even during these last few days, Bloomington has its own thing going on. It never belonged exclusively to the class of 2009, just like we never belonged exclusively to it. Come September it will belong to the class of 2013. Right now, it belongs to the Arrowmen. Frankly, that’s kind of a relief.

So these last few nights, sitting on indoor couches on outdoor porches instead of contemplating impending goodbyes with friends who are leaving or who are being left behind, we have been awarded the wonderful chance to sit back, shake our heads and ask, “Hey – what do you make of all these Boy Scouts all over town?!”