Forty Years In The Wilderness
                           or
                Rocky Mountain Hijinks
         A camping adventure by Peter B. Steiger
                        08/19/99

I'm not a real active guy any more.  Right about the time I got married,
my body went into deep hibernation and I never really got out of it: My
idea of exercise is to jog to the refrigerator for another can of Diet
Coke twice a day, and maybe type faster on the computer keyboard when I
really want to get my heart rate going.  So I'm about the last person
you'd expect to volunteer to be a counselor at summer camp, the only
less likely person being Jabba The Hutt.

However, with camp time rapidly approaching and no men available as
counselors, our church got really desperate given the fact that we had a
couple dozen boys signed up to go.  So desperate, in fact, that Dave the
youth pastor running the show didn't laugh hysterically when I offered
to take a week of vacation and help out.

The first hurdle was the application to be a counselor.  Dave said he
had warned the camp director about me as much as he could without
scaring her too much - I would have loved to be a fly on the wall during
THAT conversation ("Really, he only looks psychotic...") but I still had
to answer scary questions like "What are your spiritual gifts?"  About
all I could think to put down for that was my great Yoda imitation and
my juggling skills.

Julie the camp director called up to tell me I was in, but I was in my
office (read: behind the curtain dividing my office from the rest of the
living room) so she talked to my charming bride Sylvia instead.  I
should have known they were talking about me when I heard the gales of
laughter coming from the bedroom.

Well, anyway, the time came to pack for camp and I went down the
checklist - casual clothes (what other kind IS there?  I haven't worn a
tie since I went to a funeral in 1994)... bathing suit... hats... whoa!
I hadn't really planned on bringing many of my hats, but hey, if it's on
the checklist of stuff we're SUPPOSED to bring who am I to argue?  For
that I had to ditch my small backpack, which would have contained
everything I needed, and dig out my old duffel bag to make room for a
tasteful selection of hats to get me through the week.  I'm not saying I
like hats; I kept it down to the 8 or 10 most appropriate for the
situations I figured would come up.

There was a meeting scheduled for 11AM Sunday, which is great if you
live an hour or two from camp but in our case that meant leaving at
7:00, a good two hours before I'm normally conscious (yes, I start work
at 8:30 but that doesn't mean that I'm in any way aware of what I'm
doing before 9 or 10).  I brought along four cans of Diet Coke expecting
them to get me through the day, and was already well into my third by
the time we got to the church parking lot. Somehow all the kids,
drivers, and counselors managed to pile into the various minivans and we
were on the road barely a half an hour late.

Somehow Dave managed to talk me into driving the last car in our convoy
so he could start hammering those camp songs into our heads.  Given that
I was halfway between falling asleep and climbing the walls from excess
caffeine, I have to wonder about his judgement, but I guess it worked
out OK apart from the fact that it took me a while to figure out that
the minivan had no clutch.  That, and the prayer after we hit the road.
Praying before you start a long trip is probably a good idea.  I think,
however, that next time I'm driving and someone starts to pray, I'll
refrain from closing my eyes or folding my hands to join in.  Amen.

We lined up for our convoy that was going to stick close together all
the way, and ZOOOOOM went car #1 down the freeway.  ZOOOOOM went car #2
down the freeway. Chug-chug-chug went car #3, apparently unaware that
his speedometer was off and he was running about 10 MPH slower than the
two lead cars. That's when we discovered that car #3 was also the only
one without a cell phone so we could call him up and let him know the
problem.

Let me tell you, there are certain songs that are quite inappropriate
to sing on a long drive to church summer camp.  I'll admit my choice
was probably one of the worst - some of the verses I made up for "I
don't want no more of Chara life" bordered on the sacreligious - but
when you've got 3 cans of Diet Coke and 2 cups of coffee in you, the
last thing you want to hear after a couple of hours on the road with
no rest stop in sight is "I've got a river of life flowing out of me".

Dave played tour guide along the way, and I don't think I want him
guiding any tours I go on:  His favorite activity was to point out
favorite disaster sites from previous trips.  "There's the place our
engine blew up," he'd cheerfully comment.  "Here's where we ran out
of gas that one time"... "Here's where we had a plague of locusts..."

With that in mind, I guess we were lucky that the worst thing that
happened was we missed our turn and went to the wrong state.  Somewhere
south of Colorado Springs we noticed that none of the roads on the
directions matched the ones we were driving by, and when we took the
nearest exit to correct the problem we got on a one-way road forcing us
onto yet another wrong highway.  By this time Dave was driving, so I got
a couple of the girls in the back seat to join me in "I got dem missed
my turn, wrong direction, late for camp Chara blues" until Dave
threatened to sing more water songs.  That shut ME up, at least.

We were almost there when Dave sang out once more:  "And there's where
our car stalled back in... hey, it happened again!"  Sure enough, one of
the cars in our group was pulled off to the side next to a sign saying
"WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T PARK HERE OR A BIG ROCK WILL FALL OFF THE CLIFF
AND CRUSH YOUR CAR".  We stopped and had a brief chat with the victims,
something along the lines of "Better you than us, eh!" and took off,
singing our way into camp.

Of course we had long since missed our 11AM meeting, but Julie and the
other counselors are apparently used to Dave's crew getting there late
because they had already planned another meeting for 1PM.  We went
around the room introducing ourselves and going over the plans for the
day, and when Julie asked if there were any questions I raised my hand
and said "Can somebody please tell me what I'm doing here?"  I guess I
still had that deer-in-the-headlights look on my face, because they
realized I wasn't kidding.

My first job was to go to my cabin and wait for the kids to arrive.  I
always like a good bit of irony, so I had a good laugh at the fact that
the "Bald Eagle" cabin went to the guy with more hair than your average
llama.  I wasn't laughing quite so much at the fact that the Bald Eagle
cabin was considerably higher up and farther away than any of the other
cabins - mostly because I was so out of breath from the climb that I
couldn't actually focus my eyes, much less laugh.  I passed another
counselor on the way up, a husky guy who lifts weights for fun, and when
I told him where my cabin was he just started snickering.  Somewhere
along the way I passed a yeti, and by the time I reached the top there
were mountain goats panting with exhaustion outside the cabin.  If I
climbed a tree I could have reached up and touched Russia's MIR space
station.

So here I am dazed with more exercise than I've had in the entire
previous two years, gasping and groaning in pain, when a parent walked
in with two of his kids.  After a couple of animal-like growls, I
managed to form words and said "Hi, I'm your counselor.  I've never done
this before, I have no idea what I'm doing here, and I'm totally
irresponsible.  By the way, do any of you know CPR?"  Before I finished
this carefully crafted speech the father was already hurrying his boys
back to their car, but I chased after them and grabbed the car door
before he could slam it shut. "Ha ha, just kidding!" I reassured him.
"I'm actually a trained professional, here to guide your boys through a
growing experience that will change their lives for the better!"  Since
I was wearing my blue clown wig at the time, I'm not sure he was buying
any of this, but he did let his kids come back to the cabin.

My crew included two brothers, two boys from my own church, and three
unrelated kids from various places in Colorado.  One of those boys
must have thought I either hated him or had a serious mental problem,
because after his arrival and my standard groan ("Who are you?  Do you
know CPR?") he left for another load, and when he re-entered I groaned
"Who are you?" at him again. This happened five or six times before I
started connecting the name with the face.

Eventually all but one of them had arrived, and I was starting to
worry that I should be doing something to keep the boys occupied until
the first camp meeting, but I couldn't leave the cabin until everyone
was checked in.  So I started unpacking my bag ("Is that bag FULL of
hats?") while the boys improved their minds by reading.  By this I
mean they discovered the interesting material written on the cabin
walls by previous campers - Christians every one of them.  Some of
those words were so amazingly disgusting, *I* didn't know them!  But
the boys were only too happy to explain it to me, loudly and
repeatedly.

Finally we had no choice but to head down the hill to the orientation
meeting without the still missing camper, so we ran (they ran; I
gasped and stumbled) down to the big room where the meetings were
held.  Which room is the big room for meetings, I wondered? That's
when someone pointed out a sign over one building that said: BIG ROOM.
Oh.  All the counselors introduced ourselves to the kids, and when I
got into the bit about being totally irresponsible and not having any
idea what I was doing, the first hint of worry crept across Julie's
face.  She got her revenge on me, however, when she had one of the
other counselors direct kids & counselors alike in a song that would
become my anthem of extreme fatigue:  A song called "High Adventure"
that involved hopping up and down about 228 times a second during the
chorus.  What a quick way to identify the most out-of-shape adult in
the room (hint: I didn't have to look very hard to find him).

It was at this point that we were introduced to the schedule that would
rule our lives for the rest of the week, and I learned that they weren't
kidding about the 6:45 wakeup.  Sure, that was on the schedule I
received with my folder full of camp counselor papers, but I figured it
was a joke, you know, like "And then we're going on a 100 mile hike
after breakfast" or "You're not allowed to use duct tape to keep the
kids in line".  But no, I was looking at a week of getting up a good
two hours before any sane human should, and WITHOUT the benefit of a
refrigerator full of Diet Cokes.  I turned for help to the boy I had
so much trouble recognizing, because he had been to camp before and
knew the drill.  But when I offered to swap with him and let him be a
counselor while I slept in every morning, he turned down the offer.

Thus began a week that I'll never forget, no matter how hard I try.
Each day was supposed to start with the cabin clean-up.  Now, some folks
might say I'm not the most organized person in the world.  When we had
that first meeting of the counselors, Julie asked if our cabins were
clean when we got there.  Sure, I said, it looked great.  So when the
cleaning person arrived later and started cleaning up the place, I guess
that shows how much I know about what a clean cabin looks like.  For
that reason, I wasn't much of a help in identifying things my fellow
Bald Eagles needed to work on in achieving a state of cleanliness.  We
stuffed our dirty clothes into dark corners, wadded up our pillows and
sheets and sleeping bags into a more-or-less symmetrical shape, and
arranged the dust into clever patterns across the floor.  I got off to a
great start by breaking the zipper on my duffel bag, so all my hats and
other clothes spilled out no matter what I did to tidy them up.

Following clean-up there was supposed to be a flag ceremony, but this
was made slightly difficult by the fact that nobody thought to bring
a flag.  Instead we hustled off to "Personal Devotions", a time to do
a quick Bible study before breakfast and "Be alone with God" for a few
minutes.  Now, some of the counselors did this with their cabins as a
group; my cabin, which contained more adrenaline per person than the
entire US Olympic Hockey Team, needed to be separated just so we could
hear God ("Will you kids pipe down?  I'm trying to manifest myself
here!")  So I'd wander from kid to kid up the hillside and through the
cabin, checking to make sure they weren't doing anything that could send
us all to prison, and each would reassure me that he was diligently
working on the little study sheet that came with each day.  Before you
could say "Amen" they were racing to be first in line for breakfast.

I can't say I blame them.  Meals were truly spectacular; I'm tempted to
convince my wife that this is what meals should be like at home.
Platters with enormous portions and all the refills you want brought
straight to your place at the table, and every lunch and dinner
concludes with a dessert fit for a king.  Of course, she would argue
that to provide that kind of service she needs a kitchen the size of
Montana and a staff of 40, so I guess I should keep my mouth shut.
Anyway I'm not so sure it's a good idea to feed that much dessert to
children who are not as accustomed to large amounts of sugar and
caffeine as I am.  This had two effects on meals:  Whenever anyone had
an announcement to make, the whole building reverbrated with a rousing
song in which the word "Announcements" is repeated like a fanfare until
everyone shouts "Shhhh!" at once.  Also, after dinner was over the kids
started pounding like gorillas on the tables until dessert appeared, at
which time there was a cheer loud enough to make you think it was time
for the Second Coming.

Probably the scariest thing about those sugar-laden, high-carbohydrate
lunches was the mandatory rest period that followed.  Colorado state law
requires campers to take an hour rest each day, with a minimum of 30
minutes flat on the bed and quiet.  No, really.  So right after we
loaded these kids down with amphetamines, I got to put them to bed.  Did
I mention that half the kids in my cabin were on large doses of Ritalin?
Did I mention that they frequently forgot to take a dose because the
daily schedule kept them away from the cabin at the proper times, and I
had no idea what their schedule was?  Let me tell you, I never realized
there were so many ways to make noise while lying flat on your bunk and
keeping your mouth shut.  Yes, somehow I managed to get them to stay
down and (relatively) quiet for that first thirty minutes, but after
that they went to great lengths to see just how far they could stretch
"stay in your own bunk" without technically violating the law.

Some time between breakfast and lunch we had our Bible hour in the Big
Room where the Dan Harder, the guest speaker, gave a lesson to the whole
camp.  Here we met Mary Ann, a muppet with a talent for putting Dan in
his place and keeping him in line.  This makes sense when you find out
that the hand behind Mary Ann's personality belongs to Dan's newlywed
Mrs., Amy.  Mary Ann's other useful skill is that she can keep the
adults entertained at the same time she enlightens the kids.

It was at lunch each day that two of the counselors would give out
their awards for cleanest and best-decorated cabins.  I only bring
this up because the Bald Eagles - remember the cabin with the
totally clueless goof-off leading seven hyperactive kids whose
idea of cleanliness was to polish up the graffiti on the walls so
you can read it better? - these Bald Eagles got a higher score
than one of the girls' cabins run by a counselor from my church
who shall remain nameless (Hi, Nina!).  Considering that our
cabin had dirty underwear, candy wrappers, and a couple dozen of
my hats strewn around, I can only imagine what her cabin looked
like to get the lower score.

Another part of the day was given over to crafts and activities of
various types (sumo wrestling, body piercing, etc.)  All the activities
had already been assigned to the counselors before I got there, so I
went over to the archery booth and hooked up with Russ, the guy in
charge of Putting Dangerous Weapons In The Hands of Small Children.
Over the course of the week we pretended we knew what we were doing as
we helped kids learn how to play Robin Hood (with the help of my green
feathered cap ("No, it's not Peter Pan!  It's Robin Hood!" I kept
explaining)).  What was really funny was the fact that, apart from the
older boys who had lots of previous experience with a bow, some of the
best archers were the youngest, smallest girls.  Here were these sixth
grade boys posturing and absolutely reeking of machismo as they strutted
up to the shooting line and missed the target every time, while a dainty
little 9-year-old girl barely taller than the bow - I'm not exaggerating
at all here - took her first lesson and then started smacking bullseyes
with no effort at all.  I'd still be laughing if not for the fact that
I never did hit the target after a week of practice.

After lunch and morning Bible studies, there was a big chunk of free
time (read: totally unsupervised mayhem).  After a brief meeting, the
counselors also had free time, so of course the first thing I did was
race to the cabin - well, huff and wheeze my way up to the cabin - and
change my silly hats for a bathing suit.  I had heard the water slide
and pool were heated, which was a welcome break from the swimming pool
back home that has ice cubes pumped into it every ten minutes to
discourage guests from lingering too long.  So every day after the
meeting I got on that bathing suit and headed back down the mountain
to the pool, and every day before I got there the sky clouded over and
thunder growled ominously.  Finally on Wednesday I made it there before
the rain started, only to find the water more than slightly chilly as
the kids all insisted "You should have been here yesterday - it was
super hot!"  As a connoisseur of hot baths, I didn't find this news
nearly as humorous as the others did, but at least I got to bang my
skull against the walls of the water slide and rub skin off 75% of my
body like everyone else.  Good thing I made it on Wednesday, too,
because when I went back on Thursday we found out that the guy who
operates the slide has Thursdays off and it was closed, as opposed
to the other three days that it was merely shut down.

Apparently the Powers That Be didn't feel I was getting enough
exercise jogging up and down that mountain 247 times a day and
belting out 18 choruses of "High Adventure" each morning, because
they also put Dave in charge of evening games.  I already knew from
experience that the man is a sadist; our Wednesday night Kids Club
games involve more physical activity than should be legal to inflict
on any adult human. So it came as no surprise that each night he did
his best to drain me of any energy that might remain after a day of
alpine hiking.  My revenge came on Thursday night, when the
counselors were instructed to hide from the campers (as though we
hadn't been doing that all week).  Dave was prepared with his
camoflage outfit, but I topped that by showing up all in black -
black shoes, socks, pants, and a turtleneck sweater pulled up to
cover half my face.  I snarled "You'll never find me! I'll be
totally invisible in the dark!  You'll pass right by me in the open
and never see me, I'll blend in so inconspicuously!"  With that and
a maniacal laugh, I topped the all-black getup with my bright
jester's cap, bells jangling with every step.

Of course that was only a ruse on my part.  Once out of sight of the
kids, I stashed the jester's cap and replaced it with a black hat
pulled low over my eyes and made for the nearest tree.  Five minutes
of futile effort was enough to convince me that I'm not going to
lift my bulk off the ground and into a tree without serious
mechanical assistance, so instead I went into the back door of the
building the kids were waiting in, waited for them to start their
search, and settled myself down under a pool table to watch the fun.

I would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for those
meddling kids.  With just 10 minutes left to go and three counselors
still missing, I was enjoying the parade of feet right by my pool
table accompanied by kids muttering "I give up.  We'll never find
anyone!" One of them, from my own cabin (and my own church), actually
did see me when he bent down to pick up a dropped pool ball, but he
just smiled and waved and went on with his game.  I'll have to buy
that boy something nice for his birthday.  But just at the last
minute, one of the discouraged boys bent over for something, saw me,
and went running out to get the rest of his group (they were required
to stay together as a cabin in order to get credit for finding us).  I
took off running, but by this time the whole game room was filled with
kids and I didn't stand a chance.  I was treated to several choruses
of "You weren't supposed to go inside!" and everyone congratulated
themselves on their superior detective work, and that was the end of
the game.  Next year I'm bringing scuba equipment so I can hide
underwater.

I guess I should mention that my daughter, Goodnight Irene, was
in camp this year too.  I tried to avoid her as much as possible,
because the whole idea was for her to experience her first week
AWAY from parental control, heaven help us all.  But avoiding
her wasn't so easy when the first day she had a crippling headache,
the second day she stepped on something that made her heel swell
up to the size of the Hindenberg, and the fourth day she wanted
to go bowling with me (she also tried numerous times to join me
swimming, but those pesky storm clouds belayed that plan).  Our
bowling experience was... painful, to put it gently.  I'm not
what you would call a skilled bowler; people have fled the place
in terror when I go stumbling around with a 62-pound weight
dangling from my fingertips.  I have a blind friend who bowls
better than I do.  So I was perhaps not the best choice of
coaches for Irene.  We tried running up, we tried throwing from
the foul line ("Irene, I should have said ROLL rather than THROW"),
and still that ball bounced all over the place.  Eventually with
the help of a lighter ball and the wisdom to stop listening to
my advice, Irene managed to find a technique that knocked half
the balls down about half the time, and we left the bowling
alley sadder but wiser.  From there we went to the archery
range, where I had promised some other kids one last shot before
we lost our access to the equipment.  Since Irene was with me,
I figured I should at least give her a fair chance, and with
much trepidation I showed her how to hold the bow and point it
at the target.  After that bowling disaster, I had some worry
that I'd have to come home explaining to my wife why our daughter
had her navel pierced - two inches in diameter.  I shouldn't
have worried; Irene started whacking that target just as well
as all the other young girls in my archery class, and quickly
outpaced my own feeble skills as an archer.

For the most part, we settled into a comfortable daily routine of
meals with excessive sugar, Bible study, games, more Bible study,
and the horrors of getting the kids to bed (more on that in a
moment), but one night things got interesting.  After the ritual of
running the counselors into total exhaustion at the games, we were
all set to head in for the evening Bible study & puppet show when
someone screamed that there was a bear at the nearby dumpster behind
the dining hall. At this point the crowd split into two groups:
Those who were trying to get as far away as they could in sheer
terror, and those who wanted to get as close as possible to pet the
bear before getting eaten and spit out. In the middle stood the
counselors, trying to simultaneously calm the panicked younger kids,
rein in the foolhardy older kids, catch a glimpse of the bear, and
save our own skins.

The bear was oblivious to the whole thing.  He ambled around the
dumpster for a while, then did a few stretching exercises against a
tree and ambled off into the woods again.  Later when we saw video
footage of the whole thing we learned he was missing part of one leg
and he's well known to the locals for sitting on the corner with a
sign ("Will growl for food") and a tin cup.

Back to that bedtime frenzy.  In theory, we were supposed to get ready
for bed around 9, have one last Bible study in the cabins at 9:30, and
have the lights out at 10.  So the first night I gave it the old
college try, speaking up so as to drown out the recitation of those
interesting words from the cabin walls.  I had *NO* luck in getting
the kids' attention, so I figured, fine, they can just have lights out
early and lie in bed wishing they had paid more attention.  I closed
with a prayer, something that takes more than a little coaxing because
I have never been able to pray in a group without getting tongue-tied
("Uhm, Lord, it's like, you know, and well, we just, uhm, and all
that...") Therefore it wasn't a real surprise that I couldn't even get
through the prayer without a constant cacophony from the boys, reading
their favorite passages from the graffiti and giggling hysterically.
Out went the lights, and then things got really noisy.

Oh, sure, I've made it clear that this was a rowdy lot, but that's
NOTHING compared to what they were like when the lights went out.  I'm
known for perhaps spicing up my stories with just a slight exaggeration
to make things more interesting, but no imaginative enhancements could
do justice to the two hours of real and simulated bodily functions
that punctuated the night air.  Each contribution was greeted by
cheers and exclamations on the quality of the sound.  I fell asleep
that first night to another round of "Pfbllllbthhht!" and "Man, that
was like SO great!  Do it again!"

The second night we fared a little better.  We made it all the way
through the Bible study with only minimal sidetracking ("Well, um,
once my dad saw a body in a car that was like totally decapitated!")
so I rewarded the boys with a little extra time to play after lights
out, and they chose a pillow fight.

In all my life I've never known that a pillow fight could be a blood
sport.  Holy polyester filling, those boys are rough!  My two model
students - the one with prior camp experience and my friend from the
home church - stayed cautiously in their bunks while a third boy egged
the others on while keeping himself out of the line of fire.  The
remaining four had an insane gleam in their eyes and a fury you'd
never imagine possible with two pounds of feathers.  They'd get into
a wild jumble of body parts, all four hitting one another with gusto,
then split off into individual one-on-one bouts.  The only thing that
kept me from getting out the duct tape was the fact that they respected
the wishes of those who didn't want to participate (cowards like me, for
instance) and they were careful not to damage the cabin or the camp's
pillows - my first ground rule was that they could only tear up their
own pillows.  I'm sure their parents will thank me later.

Finally I put my foot down and turned off the lights, and that's when
I discovered just how many of them brought flashlights along.  So we
stayed up another half an hour while they tried to blind each other
and/or wear out the flashlight batteries (I prayed fervently for the
latter).  The one of them discovered that if he whacked his
disposable camera hard enough on the edige of his bed, he could
make the flash go off without advancing the film.  I may be seeing
spots in front of my eyes for the rest of my life thanks to that
wonder of modern technology.

After that second nearly sleepless night I was ready to lay down the
law, and when they didn't shut down at the appointed time I went into
overdrive disciplinarian mode.  You don't want to see an angry clown;
I was all over those boys like nerds on pizza.  I was confiscating
flashlights, having the louder ones stand against the wall (at one
point all four walls were crowded), and taking away free time right
and left.  Sure enough, the following night they got quiet much
earlier... which would have been great if one of the better-behaved
campers hadn't gotten sick after the others started dropping off to
sleep.  Ahhh, the joys of substitute parenting.

Somehow amidst all the hyperactivity and gas attacks and mountain
climbing and archery scares ("Sweetie, maybe you shouldn't point
that at my chest while you load it...") we made it through the week
and got to the final Bible study on Thursday night.  Dan and Amy and
Mary Ann had ingeniously worked the bear appearance into their script
in less than 24 hours, and several other cabins had prepared skits
for our entertainment.  Per Julie's instructions, the skits didn't
necessarily have to be Bible-related.  Julie had great faith in the
campers; what she didn't have was an understanding of the male brain,
which consists of 18% pizza, 52% sports and/or cars and/or ethernet
routers, 43% superior math skills and whatever remains is occasionally
used for manners and common decency and stuff like that.  What a
typical guy considers to be harmless and enjoyable, normal people
consider to be a violation of about 437 different state and federal
laws, common decency and at least 4 commandments.  So here were all
the guys - all of us ranging in physical age from 8 to 48 but none of
us more than 12 emotionally - laughing our heads off while the
civilized portion of the room was ready to lynch us.

Julie hurried everyone to the campfire before things got totally
out of hand, and we had a great time singing songs, quoting favorite
Bible lessons from the week, and embarrassing the counselors.  I'm
the only one that got that treat, actually.  Other kids were responding
to the question about what they learned by giving heartfelt speeches
about taking the narrow path, making up with their brother, etc. so it
was with great delight that I called Dan's attention to one of the boys
from my church who was also in the Bald Eagle cabin.  He's going to do
me proud, I thought, imagining how he would prove that we really had
been paying attention to the devotions and Bible studies.  He leaned
over to the bullhorn they were using to amplify kids' voices and said
"What I learned was never to get in a pillow fight with the kids in my
cabin because they don't fight fair, and what my brother said about
making up with me is a lie!"

Unfortunately there's a clause in the counselor's instructions saying
we're not allowed to dig a hole and crawl into it, so all I could do
was put my head in my hands and pray nobody recognized me under the big
Russian fur hat I wore for the occasion.

After we got the cabins settled down for the night the counselors had
a meeting to discuss the skits from the male half of the camp; next
year's camp rules are going to explicitly forbid anything involving
llamas, jello and saran wrap.  While we were having this meeting the
math corner of my brain was computing the odds that I would get back
to a cabin that was still standing - this was the first time I had
left all seven boys in one place unsupervised, and visions of fire
trucks, ambulances and SWAT teams danced in my head.

Amazingly, the cabin was still intact by the time I got back some 30
minutes later, but I had just missed the bell that ended round 1 of a
boxing match.  I'm not kidding:  One of the brothers was nursing a sore
eye where one of the boys from my church had popped him in defense of
the other brother when the two brothers went at each other's throats.
Now I know why they need counselors at these camps - to keep the
nightly fights limited to pillows.  None of us would have gotten any
sleep that night if it wasn't for duct tape, the camp counselor's
best friend.

I didn't want to mention the sick camper because I don't want to
embarrass him, but he was by far the best behaved in my cabin.  He
reminds me a lot of me at that age, except he's not nearly as
obnoxious.  But like me, he's not into bullies and our roughhouse
cabin had both of us cowering on our bunks during the hostilities.  So
it wasn't really that surprising that on a couple of occasions he woke
me up to announce that he was sick to his stomach - I remember all too
often getting sick at the thought of facing another day under the
thumb of the bigger kids.  He got sick once more Thursday after all
the fighting was over and the others were starting to go to sleep, and
this time it wasn't going away, so I took him in search of the camp
nurse.  She was at another meeting for the counselors who didn't
have a cabin full of hyenas to sit on, so I broke up the somber
mood to ask for her and she got my camper a couple of Tums and some
soothing talk.  He and I took the long way back to our cabin so we
could have a quiet walk together, and along the way I apologized
for not being able to control the rough boys better, and he looked
at me with a timid expression on his face and said wistfully,
"Pastor Dave would have been able to."

Ouch.

There was still one last stunt to pull on Friday morning, and I have
been waiting since June for the right moment.  People who have known
me for a while know that I like to shave and regrow various bits of
facial hair at odd intervals depending on my mood, and as long as I'm
going to suddenly make a six-month growth disappear I like to get a
lot of mileage out of the event.  So I'll wait until everyone has had
a chance to see me with a full beard or mustache or whatever, get used
to the way I look, and then I find a quiet moment to sneak away and
shave off whatever it is that's destined to be removed this time.
This particular week I had no beard and several months worth of
mustache, and early Friday I got up and whacked it all off before
the kids arose.

For some reason adults aren't real observant, and most of the time
that I do this I get little or no reaction; a few clever folks might
give me a puzzled look as they try to figure out what's different ("Is
that a new hat?") and once in a while someone will realize what's
going on.  But to drive home just how little effect my tonsorial
antics have on normal people, let me point out that as often as not
my wife doesn't even notice when... well, she just doesn't notice.

So I figured I'd get even less of a reaction from the kids, who have
more important things to think about like how many pancakes they can
wolf down before it's time to go home. I sure wasn't expecting what
happened as I strolled up the line of kids waiting for breakfast.  As
I passed each group, there were little yelps of surprise, a lot of
laughter, a few screams of terror, and one or two shouts of "You look
like a girl!" (OK, so I had the longest hair in camp...)

I stand corrected:  Kids DON'T have anything more important to worry
about than the facial hair status of an eccentric camp counselor.

For the kids in my charge, the adventure was over; for me, it was just
beginning.  On my way out of the last camp gathering in the big room,
I saw a familiar orange-and-white RV tilted dangerously over to one
side in the parking lot (we need to get those leaf springs fixed one
of these days), and out bounded a dog looking for someone to play ball
with and a sleepy wife and son, who had spent the night in the parking
lot waiting for me.  It may come as a surprise to find that the dog
had no trouble at all in that parking lot full of kids finding someone
who wanted to play ball with her; we had to pry her loose from her new
friends.

We all piled into the RV and headed out to Colorado Springs to
visit some friends, and along the way had guns pointed at us
several times - it turns out that there was an escaped convict
on the loose from a nearby prison (no, I'm not making that one
up either). But the guards took one look at our haphazard RV setup
and said "Nobody would be crazy enough to ride in there!" and waved
us through each checkpoint.

Saturday night our exhausted family was finally on the road back
home when the RV started sputtering, and by 10 or so we were stopped
at a junkyard or something trying in vain to restart the engine.
Sylvia asked me to get out and push it downhill at one point; I was
half unconscious from a week's worth of sleep so I wasn't much help
and I don't really remember much about that. But I do remember
looking out the over-the-cab bed window from time to time and seeing
that we were either creeping along at a few miles an hour or pulled
over to let the engine cool down again, and each time I muttered a
sleepy prayer to get home safely before falling back asleep.

Some time during the night I awoke and looked out the window to see
that we seemed to be stopped in some trailer park along the highway,
and I looked down to the driver's seat to see if Sylvia was OK.  She
wasn't there!  The bed was full of me and my stuff, so I knew she
wasn't sleeping there; I figured she must have put the kids together
in one bunk and taken the other for herself.  I went back to sleep,
and woke up every couple of hours to see that nobody had moved.
Finally dawn started to give light to the RV, and Sylvia STILL hadn't
moved and I was getting worried that we'd be late for church - a
problem not only because I hate to miss our pastor's world-famous
sermons, but also because it's my job to gather up the tithes and make
the bank deposit each week.  So I started praying more fervently for
the vehicle's rapid recovery, and in mid-prayer I heard the back door
of the RV open and Sylvia whisper "come on into the house, kids... but
don't wake your father."

The house?  I looked out the window again, and this time that run-down
trailer park looked more familiar.  It was OUR run- down trailer park,
and during the night Sylvia made it back, parked next to our mobile
home, and gone inside to sleep in our own bed.  I long ago learned
that God has a terrific sense of humor, so I'm pretty sure that was
laughter I heard rumbling in the clouds overhead.

I've spent the last week recovering from my adventures, and to
everyone who keeps asking if I'm glad it's all over - not on your
life!  I'm going to keep my stuff packed so I'll be ready to go
back next time.  Can you lend me an extra roll of duct tape?