A Really funny story

[Mo]

Got this email from a friend, it made me laugh REALLY HARD.
Mozilla



Dear Mom & Dad,
Our Scoutmaster told us to write to our parents in case you saw the flood on TV and are 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 Chad when it happened.
Oh yes, please call Chad'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 neat. We never would have found Chad in the dark if it hadn't been for the lightning.
Scoutmaster Don got mad at Chad for going on a hike alone without telling
anyone. Chad said he did tell him, but it was during the fire so he robably
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.
David is going to look weird until his hair grows back.

We will be home on Saturday if Scoutmaster Don gets the car fixed. It wasn't his fault about the wreck. The brakes worked okay when we left.

Scoutmaster Don said that with a car that old you have to expect something to break down; that's probably why he can't get insurance. We think it's a neat car. He doesn't care if we get it dirty, and if it's hot, sometimes he lets us ride on the fenders. It gets pretty hot with 10 people in a car. He let us take turns riding in the trailer until the highway patrol man stopped and talked to us.

Scoutmaster Don is a neat guy. Don't worry, he is a good driver. In fact, he is teaching Terry how to drive on the mountain roads where there isn't any traffic.
All we ever see up there are logging trucks.
This morning all of the guys were diving off the rocks and swimming out in the lake. Scoutmaster Don wouldn't let me because I can't swim, and Chad was afraid he would sink because of his cast, so he let us take the canoe across the lake.
It was great. You can still see some of the trees under the water from the flood.
Scoutmaster Don 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 car so we are trying not to cause him any trouble.
Guess what? We have all passed our first aid merit badges. When Dave dived into the lake and cut his arm, we got to see how a Tourniquet works.
Wade and I threw up, but Scoutmaster Don said it probably was just food poisoning from the leftover 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 mail our letters and buy some more beer. Don't worry about anything, we are fine.

Love, Timmy

[Catlady]

That's great!
I hate to say it, but it sounds like some of the outings I went on as a kid, especially the 10 people in a compact car bit. Or the one where someone's camp stove tipped over on one of the adults and they had to drive her down to the hospital ( actually one of the campers who was old enough to drive had to do it apparently, I didn't see that first hand). Then there was the time that a bear was trying to claw its way into the cabin all night ( I so wish I was kidding, though fortunately I heard about that one second hand too). Aw, memories

[MyraTrue]

*dying of laughter*

Oh my! I just read that to my Dad- the ex-scout. He wanted a copy. Oh, thats just too wrong, and too funny!

[arcon]

reminds me of a song......

"hello mother.....hello fathaaa.....
here were are at Camp Gernada
(i probably didnt spell that right)

[lochinvar]

As an ex-Scoutmaster, I have to say they hit it dead-on--bullseye.

When I started, my father (another ex-Scoutmaster--go figure!) told me that the boys would never remember the campouts where the weather was fine, the food was good, and things ran according to schedule. The ones they'll remember and tell about decades from now are the ones where someone broke an arm and had to be paddled 20 miles to the ranger station, or the one where so-and-so swamped the canoe with all the food, or the one where it rained and then plummeted to -2 F.

After putting in eight years, I can attest it's true.

[JEC]

Agree. I was there for 8 years, and the one the most memorable, I broke an arm 3 days before the end of the trail. I later fell through a cliff and then a waterfall, and finally we body rafted through class IV rapids and finished our 30 mile hike. Teenager boy = underdeveloped brain = no fear. Some people think that those qualities never go away.

[Iwant2bafencer]

"Camp is very, . . entertaining, . . . . something something do do do do do do do do" Ahhh those were the days.

[Catlady]

Arcon,
I was thinking of that song too.

I have to say one of my (least) favorites was the last one I went on. We were staying at a property that I think is owned by a school district in the area and they rent it out to groups--the college I attend holds training for RAs and peer counselors there. We drove about half way up and stopped at a high school athletic field to do activities. Your basic cooperation exercise stuff (build a package for an egg that will keep it from breaking when dropped from a ladder out of tape, packing peanuts and drinking straws; an exercise where you have to get people across a space with only a certain number of feet on the ground, but with everyone touching. etc) It went okay for me other than on the exercise where you had to move people. Basically all the girls got on the boys' backs piggyback style and then to keep the contact all the girls held hands. It went well except half way across I started to slip, I valiantly held on until the finish line but by then I was near hanging upside down from my partner's back by my knees. I couldn't quite figure out how to get down, so I just let go--speaking of that no fear thing--and landed on my head, but no permanent damage done. That and when we did the relay where everyone had to put their head on a baseball bat on ground and spin around then run, I lost the race for my team because I kept falling. So it's time to have lunch. I found my friends, got out my lunch, and found a nice place to eat. I guess some of the boys got done eating early and got bored. The group leaders had packed lots of water knowing we'd be spending most of the day running around out in the sun in the summer. These boys got the bright idea to have a water fight. I guess they had fun, but that meant essentially we had virtually no water. So we finished up our exercises and went up to where we were going to stay. We were all thirsty, and in the meantime, one of my friends had gotten a sun burn. This and the water becomes important later on. The leaders just pulled the cars off the road when we got there and parked in a field near the cabins. We lugged our stuff up to the cabins--the cabins had beds with mattresses, but these were by no means in a condition that would make you feel comfortable having them in contact with your skin or hair, so we brought sleeping bags to lay on the bunks. The cabins weren't exactly the Ritz, but they were all right for what they were--heck they actually had their own bathrooms, with showers so you didn't have to hike through the woods in the middle of the night to heed nature's call, and they did have drinking fountains. However, like most insitutional drinking fountains they only produced a trickle of lukewarm, slightly odd tasting water, which we found out while trying to relieve the thirst we'd worked up earlier. By the time we'd claimed bunks and dumped our stuff, my friend with the sunburn was not feeling well and was complaining. So she, one of my other friends, one of the leaders and I set off to see if anyone had any Solarcain (if you don't have it where you are it's basically and anti-biotic and anasthetic spray you put on sunburns). We walked over camp, including to the offices figuring they might have some, and didn't find any. That only made us more thirsty. About then it was time for dinner. The camp had a cafeteria, so we, with the complaining sunburn victim in tow, hauled ourselves down to get some food--and we hoped liquid refreshment. The age old lesson of coed activities was reaffirmed. You must get to the cafeteria early, or the boys will eat all the good stuff. It turned out all we got to drink with dinner was a small--about the size they usually give out in school cafeterias--carton of orange juice, and there were no seconds. It was about this time that quite a few of us, mostly girls, were considering forming a lynch mob to punish the boys who'd wasted all our water at lunch. We did typical camp kind of stuff, and it should be noted the sunburn victim was making sure we were quite aware of her discomfort. I know sunburns can be serious, but there was nothing we could do for her, not to mention this particular friend was known to be a complainer, so we were all sort of relieved when she decided to head back home with the people who had to be back to take the SATs the next day. There weren't too many more incidents, other than apparently the field where the leaders parked turned to mud and a few people got stuck. But it was quite memorable to say the least.

I just have to share one more thing. This was related to me by one of my mom's friends via my mom after a Boy Scout marathon hike--I forget how far they went, but it was one of those multi-mile, multi-day things. Her son came home completely filthy and she asked him "So, did you guys try to at least rinse off a little while you were gone?" he replied" Well, we did get in a lake with some soap once." Yes, I know there's not a lot of point in bathing in the wilderness, but the answer was just so funny, indicating they and the soap were both in the same lake, not necessarily that anyone actually used any.

[Catlady]

I just thought of something else, not camp related really, but having to do with children and the great outdoors. It's always been a family tradition to go to Yellowstone. I could write a substantial essay--and actually I am--on the whole mystique the place holds for my family. Once my grandfather was taking the family to Yellowstone, one of the uncles and a cousin was coming too. At the time my mom's little brother was about ten years old and the cousin was about the same. On the way up they were joking about bears, and either my grandfather or the uncle said, jokingly" You know how to catch a bear don't you?" "No, how do you", comes the chorus from the backseat. "Well, you have to sneak up on them and put salt on their tails". This was forgotten by the time they got to Yellowstone, or so they thought. They were staying in what was known as house keeping cabins where essentially you brought your own bedding and provisions for cooking--I am so glad they don't have those anymore since it wasn't much of a vacation for my grandmother who was essentially doing everything she did at home, just in a different place. But everything was off doing their own thing, my mom's little brother and the cousin had been sent out to go entertain themselves. My grandmother was in the cabin putting things away and not really paying attention when the boys came in and asked if they could have the salt. Like I said, she was concentrating on putting things away and didn't really need the kids underfoot right then, so she told them to go ahead and take it. Then as so often happens in these situations something clicked and she thought"Why on earth would those kids want the salt?" Then she remember what had been said in the car and ran outside to find the boys, with salt in hand closing in on an about to be very surprised bear cub. Fortunately she caught them before they got to the bear and the cub just trotted off into the woods and everyone was okay, but it just shows you you've got to be careful what you say to kids because they'll remember it.

[Avril Roddam]

That was really funny!!!! Mum was a scout leader and she couldn't stop laughing when I read it to her!

That sounds a bit like a trip some family friends and I went on kaiaking (probably misspelt) and canoing down the Derwent River (a long, rapid-filled river in South Tasmania)
We started out fine, then during the trip, we managed to capsise in very deep water, lose one conoe, a bag and a life jacket and lose a 11 year old (police spent the afternoon looking for him, and he finally phoned his mum to say he came out the other side of the river and walked into NewNorfolk and spent a couple of hours woth some friends (11 yearolds huh!)