Way Down Yonder in the Paw Paw Patch

As the camping trip draws near, my daughter is full of advice.

The latrines being the big fascination of the trip, the first piece of advice is about their use.

Don't drop your Glow Stick in the latrine.

Not far off from the advice my father had given me about dropping my flashlight in the outhouse. Lovely. You know this is going to happen to me. Or to the person who uses the latrine just ahead of me.

The other advice she gave me came straight from the camp itself. We should store all food items in sealed plastic in the car. Because of bears.

What?

On my first and last trip to Camp Hari Kari, Mom sent me with a stash of goodies in my orange patent plastic smiley face suitcase. No bear came and ate it. Just a raccoon who clawed at it until the zipper ripped and he could siphon out every last Fun Size Snickers bar.

I'm hoping that is the worst of the rules.

When I was there as an eight-year-old, we walked through the woods in single file on the path. No running. Walked. Single file.

This is camp???

I ran.
I ate the blackberries from the bushes.
I waded into the water we weren't supposed to go in. In my shoes.
I climbed a tree.

I got into a lot of trouble.

Trouble in Girl Scouts is more shame than punishment. At least it was in the 70s. I was told to leave the gathering (of evidently more compliant girls) and go sit in a tent alone (The Time Out Tent? Solitary confinement? ) until I could compose a Haiku or a poem or write a story or illustrate some adventure we'd had at camp (I can draw a procession of girls in pig tails being led slowly down a path in single file to the Mess Hall...woo hoo!) or some other meaningful task with pencil and paper.

What I didn't know while I was racking up hours in the Bad Girl Tent was that all of what was written or drawn by me or the handful of other bad girls, was being reproduced on a local mimeograph machine and bound into a booklet to be presented to the parents on Pick Up Day!

I am sure this little gesture was intended to make us little Brownie Bandits squirm. Surely it would prompt questions and compel little prisoners to explain why some people wrote poems and so many others did not and then under the pressure of guilt and shame cough up a full confession.

But I knew better. My mother took the book and began to page through it clucking and marveling about all the works of literary genius I 'd produced. "Liza, you practically wrote the whole thing! I am so proud!"

And with my wet shoes and uncombed hair I turned toward the car with my parents and sibs and ran like a rebel to hop in the car and head for home.