Josef Míchal

“When I was hospitalized in the internal medicine ward, I was lying in the intensive care unit and the head doctor, who knew that I was an athlete, told me: ‘Well, Mr. Míchal, I would not expect to see you here.’ And I said: ‘Doctor, I will not die here, don’t worry about me.’ He said: ‘How can you know?’ I replied: ‘Because my grandpa lived longer than my father and he slowly died of a work injury.’ The doctor started laughing and he asked me: ‘To die slowly of a work injury?’ That was because grandpa worked with bees in the Unified Agricultural Cooperative, and he fell down there and he got pneumonia. And the head doctor said: ‘And he died.’ I said: ‘No, that would have been a work injury. But he planned to surpass his father’s age by one year. And so he recovered and a year later, after he had lived one year longer than his own father, as he promised, a year later he contracted influenza and that’s why he died. This means to die slowly, because his body became so weak, that’s what I meant by saying that he died slowly of a work injury. As I say, if I lived the same age as my great-grandfather, I would be content.’”

“The most important program was competing for the ‘beavers’ – the merit badges - of loneliness, courage and silence. For instance, Eduard Verner was gathering the beavers for several years and he was still unable to complete the beaver of silence. When he had only about two hours left until the end of the test, an American jeep just happened to pass by and other Scouts, like Jaroslav Hanus, were trying to upset him and they told him that it was a Škoda car and not a Jeep, until Eda could not stand it any longer and he exclaimed: ‘You idiots, I have to know it!’ And he failed the test again.”