On Top Of Spaghetti!

We were starving for dinner. It could not start soon enough.

We follow the scent of spaghetti and meatballs through the woods to the Mess Hall. I am secretly hoping that all the bears are hard of smelling.

There is a new song of thanks to learn.
We hear it. We repeat it. We sing it. We sing it in rounds 3 times.

Minutes later we are all chowing down of sticky, steaming, clumped together pasta, rubbery meatballs, and Ragu. Broiled garlic bread. Salad drenched in bottled creamy Italian dressing. Mmm, mmm, good.

I want seconds. I never want seconds.

I stroll in (the In door) ahead of schedule. They haven't called "all the people with any other color than blue pants can go get seconds" or anything similarly segregating.

I have soooooo broken the rules. The kitchen Nazis glare at me incredulously. I am up a creek without a paddle. And no PFD, by the way.

I try charm.

"Hi there! THAT was Fab-u-lous! Would you mind if I had a smidge more? Oh! Don't get up! I can certainly help myself!"

A snarky looking kitchen witch wipes a puss from her face and offers to serve me with Stepford Wife brightness.

As I am extending my plate to receive her reluctant plop of spags and balls and garlic toast I notice a pot of something truly scrumptious siting between the chaffing dishes.

Ratatouille? Oooh! Yumm-o!

I say' "What's THAT? with terrific enthusiasm?

Mrs. Stepford loses the smile and says flatly "That's made special for the kitchen staff."

Oh.

Pardon me.

I smile fakely. "Of course it is."

The Kitchen Nazis have contraband? Like the Baldwins and their darn prohibition era Recipe! I bet they have Chianti too! There is going to be hell to pay. I am wild with disbelief.

Darn it if I can't have the Secret Sauce then I am piling on the little rubbery meatballs! I extend my plate once more. Mrs. Stepford counts out the prescribed number of meatballs and places the spoon in the dish. I keep my plate defiantly in place, unmoved, to indicate that I want more.

She's baffled. A rebel in the scouting ranks?

I don't move. Her eyes meet mine. My turn to hold a lifeless Stepford smile. She hesitates. Still I don't move. I haven't even blinked since I approached the meatball bin. She's looking nervously around for support from the ranks, but alas they are eating. The Earth could crash into the sun and they'd go on eating.

She slowly counts out another serving of meatballs and places them cautiously on my plate, as if they might explode. She looks as if she suspects I will pounce.

I actually may. I think about snatching the contraband ratatouille and running off into the woods. But I know the grey ladies will outrun me on their turf, despite my carb load.

I settle for a two-fer of meatballs and return to the table, grabbing a Dixie cup of bug juice on the way. We have a full evening ahead of us, complete with singing around the campfire.

In rounds, of course.

Over There! Over There!

I am not sure where these little old ladies get their energy from. (I am not being mean - they've all shared how very proud they are that they've been Girl Scouts for 50 years - you do the math.)

We are hiking up hills and over rocks and climbing something affectionately known as Heart Attack Hill. I am sucking down bottles of water both out of thirst and to offload the weight of them.

We are having serious discussions about real hiking gear vs. fashion hiking gear (guess which I like better?)

We are learning how to read a blazed trail.

A blaze is a big red dot painted on a tree at about eye-level. (I am not sure why the nature lovers don't call this graffiti and consider it defacing nature. It would not surprise me at all if they did.) But in any event, someone blazes a trail by marking trees along a preferred path way so that you can follow it by going toward on blaze and easily spotting the next - which calls you to go toward it - and so on and so on until you have completed your hike.

Interesting facts:

1 - a tree with two blazes indicates a turn. You should be looking more to the left and right for the next blaze.

2 - Girl Scouts get very annoyed if you habitually forget the word "blaze" and call them "red dots."

We get to Lookout Rock and the girls are encouraged to help each other climb up to the top. From there you should be able to "see" four states. (if it weren't for all the damn trees.) It is a beautiful spot for a group picture of all the girls together looking healthy and active.

And being Girl Scouts, since they are assembled and confined to the flat surface of a rock, we must teach a song about how lovely the hills are. Really.

We hear it.
We repeat it.
We sing it.
We sing it in rounds three times.

We climb to the summit and pick up jaw bones and vertebrae of dead unidentifiable varmints along the way. All picked clean except for a random whisker or hair. Eeewww. (But the girls know that Tree will just love their treasures! She will pull them out and marvel at them and identify them on the spot - this is a muskrat skull - that is a skunk pelvis. Again, eeewww.)

We are tromping through some green leafy curly-cued plants. Another counselor is suddenly very excited. She knows what they are and thinks she should scoop up a bunch in her bag (hopefully not the one with the pieces of carcass in it) to bring back for Pluto (Disney fan? Former planet sympathizer?) to saute in some butter in the mess hall kitchen. Says they are delicious.

"Delicious?" I ask. "Delicious in a general sense or delicious as compared with other things you might scrape off the forest floor and fry?"

No answer.

It is hard to know what will offend whom our here. But unless I plan to blaze my trail home on my own, I think I'd better be kind to our guide and try to fit in.

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

To be truthful, my enthusiasm improved with hers. I even did the hand gestures with Muffin when we sang Grace in rounds at lunch.

And where I had been secretly jonesing for a latte and a swing on a hammock far from the madding crowd of over-excited campers, I was actually considering getting in a Funyak for a whirl around Lake Run Amok.

We grabbed all of our water gear from the cabin and proceeded to the lake. It was a beautiful day and we all sat on our beach towels (Sit-upons, in the vernacular) soaking in the sun waiting for our water sports leaders to join us. I was just feeling warm and toasty when I spotted Jerry Mulligan from work. He's a department manager I work with at home, and here he is walking toward us! He's a great guy. One of my favorites. What's he doing here?

Oops.

Not Jerry.

Gretchen. Water sport aficionado. I mistook her graying pompadour, enormous square shoulders and Fred Flintstone mannerisms for his. Gretchen would be teaching us to paddle properly.

I will not be mentioning this to Jerry.

We all stand patiently as we are guided through the merits of wearing a PFD. ( A PFD for those not in the know, is a Personal Floatation Device - the PC way of saying life jacket.) Some jackass with a law degree probably suggested that all of our boat-owning friends would be victim to all manner of litigation for calling them "life jackets" and suggesting that they guaranteed one's life. Same guy responsible for our Styrofoam cups suggesting in print that "Contents may be hot" (I should hope so, I just spend $4 on a cup of coffee) and our shoe boxes all containing little burlap packets of God-Only-Knows-What that read "Do not eat." (As if.)

We are then taught the appropriate rowing posture and how to cleverly avoid touching the paddle to the grass (sacrilege!) when we are standing lakeside (And BTW why ARE we still standing lakeside?) by balancing it on the decorative end of our Teva rubber sandals.

And then we are finally, one by one, pushed from the beach in our Funyaks where we all commence racing toward the little island we were just told not to approach so as to not disturb the turtles who are sunning there.

I feel a Haiku assignment for 12 coming on.

But for now I'll race my daughter across the lake - play a sanctioned game of bumper boats - and splash anyone and everyone who dare tried to edge me out in a race to the dock.

By the time we change for our hike we are all wringing wet and laughing our heads off. It's the stuff camp memories are made of.

It's Not Easy Being Green

The pond excursion is what you'd expect: a few dead things, lots of pond scum, a few near fall-ins, and way too many bugs. I nearly stepped on a frog. I am happy to report that it was more afraid of me than I of it, and it hopped frantically away long before I stopped doing my little get-it-off-me dance.

My daughter unearthed a neat-o fossil. Also found a frog. Named it Fabio. I'll call it a successful outing at the pond.

What was not so successful was her trip to the latrine. Evidently camp french toast and fruit cup put quite a whammy on her bowels and while the other girls were still searching for an equally adorable frog or an equally cool fossil, she scampered up the hill with someone named Thorn to the nearest toilet (or reasonable facsimile). It was a typical outhouse with enough light shining in so you could see what you needed to see and everything you wanted to avoid seeing. My girl takes a seat and promptly notices what she calls a "big hairy Wolf Spider."

And poof! Instant constipation.

Accompanied by the usual irritability. Super. Just in time to explore the falls.

And so, what followed was an hour or two that included a lot of grousing, lack of participation, inability to see the humor in things and eventually, tears of frustration.

I was pretty sure, the tears had little to do with a clogged drain. But we'd start there.

I offered to walk with my gal through the woods (a good walk will get your motor running!) and go back to the cabin where an actual flushing toilet, however rust stained, awaited her bare bottom. I could be reasonably sure that I could rid the place of spiders, snakes, bees and other vermin before Her Highness took to the throne.

And while she sat and went about her business at her leisure, I sat on the other side of the door (guarding against all intruders of any size, shape and number of legs) and chatted with my littlest angel.

She missed her Dad. (It's an ugly job but someone has to do it.)
She missed her dog. (Probably more than she missed her Dad)
She felt guilty about not calling him the night before (He'd told her to...)
And wondered if her brother was doing alright with no one to deflect Dad's attention (My words, her thoughts...)

So once she finished what she'd come to start, I handed her my phone and told her to dial her dad. I also told her to focus on the fun things...Fabio, and the fossil. (he'd use any grim news like the toilet situation to convince her never to come back)

She brightly described the frog and the fossil and the cabin and the lake and the falls and all the other wonders of nature we were experiencing. And I think she convinced herself that she really was having a good time.

My girl practically skipped to the Mess Hall to join in a round of thankful songs before digging in to a daisy shaped chicken patty with her pals to power up for an hour of Funyaking on the lake.

Food! Glorious Food!

The cement floor.

The unfinished wooden walls.

The dim lighting. (Probably a good thing.)

It resembled a garage.

I would have run screaming through the woods to safety if not for the smell of coffee (and my full cognizance of the fact that the nearest Dunkin' Donuts was an hour away.)

It was exactly the same, except the long wooden picnic tables had been replaced by square formica tables that seat 8, the picnic tables having been eaten by termites decades ago, I'm sure.

I follow Debbie and the scent of Folgers into the kitchen. Which was a no-no 40 years ago. We waited to be called. I guess coffee etiquette is different.

I fill my cup, add the creamer, and walk out to sit and unjangle my nerve endings.

Debbie follows me - and bends to whisper to me.

"We just broke the rules. We went in AND out the IN door." She points. She is right. There a purple magic markered sign above each door indicating which direction they are to be traveled through.

I've been here 5 minutes and I am about to get my first Haiku assignment.

I lay low and let the caffeine settle into my soul while some very energetic lady in khakis and denim named Muffy or Muffin or Puffin or some camp-bestowed name teaches the girls a song of thanks to be sung before the meal.

We hear it.
We repeat it.
We sing it.
We sing it in rounds three times.

There will be a lot of this this weekend.

But for now, it's chow time.

French toast sticks! Bacon! Cereal in little boxes! Yogurts! Fruit cup!

And the best part? It is all on paper plates and in little styrofoam bowls.

NO SCRAPING!

Things are looking way up. Bring on the Pond Exploration activity!

The Kids are Brats, the Food is Hi-De-Ous!

Finally the girls settle down and snuggle into bunks and nod off.

The ladies and I tiptoe into our room and prepare for bed. I can see my breath in the moonlit room. I am wearing sweatpants, a long sleeve T-shirt, a polar fleece and socks to bed. Carmella has donned a ski cap. Debbie, the pro camper has some kind of cocoon sleeping bag that she might be able to go into outer space with. Carmella is remarking about her solar-something-or-other gear. I roll out Scott’s Coleman sleeping bag anticipating the worst.

I am completely surprised. Of the three of us, I sleep the best. That isn’t to suggest that anyone slept well on the 3 inch flea bags we called mattresses. But I wasn’t cold. In fact I was a little overheated. (Thank God for peri-menopause. I could fry an egg on my abs.)

I was up to watch the sun rise over the lake and texted Scott to thank him for the toasty sleeping gear. He sent me a text that he hoped the big hairy spider picked someone else’s bunk.

First things first. I need coffee. When does the Mess Hall open, where is it, and can I go early??? And if I can’t go early, how do we rouse the troops and begin the hike to wherever it is that the food lives?

The girls begin to shuffle about in their quarters and the games begin…All the questions about what should be worn for what activity and what will get wet and how long until I get to change out of it. It is like schizophrenia Pee Wee Herman-style.

Most entertaining was the modesty. While Carmella and Debbie and I just get up and change, the girls are willing to wait patiently to go one by one into our filthy bathroom to privately change from pajamas to clothes without anyone getting a peek. No one dare exposed a training bra, a panty or a bare naked anything. I can only imagine what the swimming activity is like in the summer. It must take ages.

But soon enough we are hiking down the trail and across the creek toward the Mess Hall.

And in the light of day (barely) I can see that it is exactly the same rustic structure in which I “dined” nearly 40 years ago – and I’m kind of in a flop sweat.

When I was 8, the Mess Hall was filled with long tables where 10 or so people could sit together. At the end of each meal we sang some cheerful little campfire ditty with little breaks in it. What the counselors did was a campfire version of Follow the Bouncing Ball or Duck Duck Goose…and tapped each campers head around the table on each syllable of the song we were all gleefully singing. When the pause came in the song, if the counselor’s hand was upon your head, you were assigned one of the jobs.

And this is where the horror began. For what seemed like every meal, I got picked for a job…and most often I was the Scraper.

The Scraper had the dubious honor of taking all the plates and cups that had been collected by the Clearer, which had been thrown willy-nilly into a gray tub, and scraping the ewey gooey remains of the meals into the trash bin. Mashed potatoes mixed with grape juice. Corn blended with coleslaw. Spaghetti mashed with fruit cup.

I gagged through the entire experience. I was sure being a POW was better.

What would be the routine now, 40 years later? And what if my child is the scraper? I will surely have a heart attack and die.

I am figuratively breathing into a paper bag as we cross the threshold into the Mess Hall and are greeted warmly by the Kitchen Nazis.

Give me strength.

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.