We Are the CITs so Pity Us...

It exceeds my worst teen horror flick expectations.

Dead bees on every sill of every smeary window.

Plastic mattresses with eleven varieties of stains of unknown origin.

Creative little poems carved into the paneling by the bedsides and scrawled with a marker on the plywood undersides of the top bunks.

But our plucky and evidently fearless leader is picking up a broom and opening doors and letting in the fresh (albeit freezing) air. A spoonful of sugar...

Carmella and I are on bed duty – and by that I mean, finding a way to cram all the girls into one bedroom so we have the other one all to ourselves.

We are carrying the three-inch filthy mattresses two at a time from our spare bunks to the room where all the girls are lobbying for top bunks or other forms of prime real estate. We wedge the mattresses in like Tetris-masters and smile as though the girls are supposed to be thrilled at the coziness. They are really not unhappy about it. They want no parts of us either.

My daughter has claimed her bunk and she’s not moving from it until she is sure it will not be claim-jumped by a more senior scout. Smart girl. She has a bottom bunk with close proximity to the bathroom. She’s claimed a spot in the hall “closet” for her back pack so her stuff is not all over the filthy floor (which has more to do with spiders than an innate sense of tidiness she was born without).

The girls spend the next few hours playing hilarious games known among the girl scout set. Games with uncomplicated rules and an and inclusiveness about them. Simple. Need no props. Can be played around an impromptu campfire. Easy for a newcomer to learn.

Except evidently if you are in your 40s. I could no m ore get the hang of Alibi than I could land a DC-10 on the beach by the lake. Thankfully my daughter wasn’t mortally horrified at my performance. At least I played and didn’t do as poorly as my peer leaders.

Eventually the girls took their prepubescent loudness outside to frighten the local wildlife. Carmella, Debbie and I played Dominoes and some Italian card game with Italian cards with no numbers but number values and odd little pictures. It made us all concentrate on the cards and not the fact that we were miles from home, deep in the woods, in a filthy cabin in iffy weather and in charge of nearly a dozen children – and their fears, varying abilities, bad dreams, asthma medication, allergies, insecurities and home sickness. And no Chardonnay, BTW.

I pushed scenes from Outer Limits from my head and gamely played along. My insides turning to mush.