Sunday, August 8, 2010

Dear Mom, A Letter From Summer Camp

Dear Mom,

Our Scoutmaster told us to write to our parents in case you saw the flood on TV and got worried. We are okay. Only one of our tents and 2 sleeping bags got washed away. Luckily, none of us got drowned because we were all up on the mountain looking for Adam when it happened.

Oh yes, please call Adam's mother and tell her he is okay. He can't write because of the cast. I got to ride in one of the search and rescue Jeeps. It was great. We never would have found Adam in the dark if it hadn't been for the lightning.

Scoutmaster Ted got mad at Adam for going on a hike alone without telling anyone. Adam said he did tell him, but it was during the fire so he probably didn't hear him. Did you know that if you put gas on a fire, the gas will blow up?

The wet wood didn't burn, but one of the tents did and also some of our clothes.

Matthew is going to look weird until his hair grows back.

We will be home on Saturday if Scoutmaster Ted gets the bus fixed. It wasn't his fault about the crash. The brakes worked okay when we left. Scoutmaster Ted said that with a bus that old, you have to expect something to break down; that's probably why he can't get insurance.

We think it's a super bus. He doesn't care if we get it dirty, and if it's hot, sometimes he lets us ride on the bumpers. It gets pretty hot with 45 people in a bus made for 24. He let us take turns riding in the trailer until the policeman stopped and talked to us.

Scoutmaster Ted is a neat guy. Don't worry, he is a good driver. In fact, he is teaching Horace how to drive on the mountain roads where there aren't any cops. All we ever see up there are huge logging trucks.

This morning all of the guys were diving off the rocks and swimming out to the rapids. Scoutmaster Ted wouldn't let me because I can't swim, and Adam was afraid he would sink because of his cast (it's concrete because we didn't have any plaster), so he let us take the canoe out. It was great. You can still see some of the trees under the water from the flood.

Scoutmaster Ted isn't crabby like some scoutmasters. He didn't even get mad about the life jackets. He has to spend a lot of time working on the bus so we are trying not to cause him any trouble.

Guess what? We have all passed our first aid merit badges. When Andrew dived into the lake and cut his arm, we all got to see how a tourniquet works.

Steve and I threw up, but Scoutmaster Ted said it was probably just food poisoning from the left-over chicken. He said they got sick that way with food they ate in prison. I'm so glad he got out and became our scoutmaster. He said he sure figured out how to get things done better while he was doing his time By the way, what is a pedal-file?

I have to go now. We are going to town to post our letters and buy some more beer and ammo. Don't worry about anything. We are fine and tonight it's my turn to sleep in the Scoutmaster's tent.

15 comments:

  1. That must be the famous "Camp grope a lot".
    Glad I never went there.

    I never went to summer camp my whole life, thank goodness.

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  2. Bunni, I didn't either. I had too much fun playing in traffic.

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  3. Glad I never went on week long overnight summer camp. I went to day camps.

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  4. Besides the pedophile part it didn't sound that bad.

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  5. Christopher, I was torn about this one, but bad taste won out again.

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  6. My kids only went to day camps. Maybe I'm overprotective.

    The one overnight camp I went to turned out badly. I got a BAD earache after sleeping in an open sleeping bag on the forest floor, no tents. Was in agony for days, they finally took me to a doctor and doc found a huge boil in my ear (insect bit me?).

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  7. Opus:

    Insects crawl into ears when you camp in the woods. They make little homes and lay eggs. The young are born (circle of life) and have to eat something like the inside of your ear. I suspect it was not a boil.

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  8. RE: PeaceLover,

    Nice mental picture there?

    Makes one wonder as to exactly what type of insects are in Kenya and Indonesia?

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  9. I never went to camp either. We played in the streets of South Philly all summer long. Best days were when someone turned on the fire plug.

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  10. Opie, I never went myself. The world was my summer camp.

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  11. PeaceLover, They go in one ear and eat their way to the other ear.

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  12. Christopher, they are ear entering brain eaters.

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  13. Lady, did that beautiful hat ever get wet?

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  14. I wasn't able to be here most of yesterday. I would like to thank Opie for entertaining everyone in my absence.

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