BE PREPARED!

Different from many boys of my generation, I didn’t have much of a scouting experience.  I think my parents must of made me join one cub scout troupe when I was pretty young, because I have this memory of having to march down the main street of Danville during a Halloween parade, dressed along with the rest of my troupe in handmade skunk costumes, carrying signs that said “I’m a Little Stinker,”  I often think that was NOT what the Brits had in mind when they founded the Boy Scouts in 1908.

There was also that time when I got to go along on a Scout camping trip at a nearby lake. We pitched a long rectangular canvas tent and after a day of activities that I don´t remember at the moment (other than the fact that someone laced the toilet paper in a camp outhouse with itching powder), had a dinner of campfire roasted hot dogs.  There might have been some beans in there somewhere, but who can remember that long ago? After dinner we sliced some gigantic watermelons and enjoyed a good old time of slurping and seed spitting contests.

I for one have always had a system that works on a basis of “water in – water out”. Basically when I gotta pee, I gotta pee!  (still true today.  I remember a line from the Freeman/Nicholson ‘Bucket List’ movie; “When a man turns 60, there are three rules:  Never pass up the opportunity to use a bathroom; never waste an erection; and never trust a fart.”

As the watermelon feast ended, we were organized into our folding sleeping cots inside the canvas tent.  I, unfortunately, was assigned a cot at the far back of the tent.  After approximately 30 minutes of young scouts making a series of fake growls and grunts and scratching noises, the scoutmaster had enough and snuck out of the tent, threw  open the untied tent flaps above his head with a huge “ROARRRRRRRR!” and sent a bunch of adolescent boys screaming into their pillows.  After that, the fun and games quickly settled down and we all soon fell asleep. 

About two hours later the watermelon juice made its way to my bladder.  I awoke, felt that pressure and knew that I would not get through the night without a pee break.  I slipped out of my cot in the pitch black of the tent, groped and stumbled my way to the front and sought desperately to blindly untie the canvas ties holding the entrance closed.  I was just able to get one leg outside of the tent and my pajama flap open as the relieving stream of watermelon infused urine began to flow.  Aahhhhhh…  

At just that moment, the scoutmaster, who was sleeping in the cot right behind me at the entrance to the tent, woke up and mumbled “Hey, what are you doing?!?” grabbed my elbow and turned me around so he could see my face.

Never say that a scoutmaster makes no sacrifices in his dedication to forming young boys.  After sending me back to my cot and laying his wet clothes and sleeping bag across a nearby picnic table, he pulled a rain slicker over his body and tried to finish out the rest of his chilly night’s sleep.

Me?  Well, the “Little Stinker” parade and that camping trip pretty much made up my lifetime Boy Scout experience.  Although I never got any badges, I still think I ended up pretty well prepared in mind and body (except for that pee thing).