Camp Maple Dell

Back in 2001, I went to scout camp at Maple Dell, an organized Boy Scout camp. It was the first time I was at a scout camp for actual Boy Scouts and not just cub or eleven-year-old scouts.

We left early one morning to go down to the camp at Payson. I think this was in August, although it could have been July. I rode with Brother Hales, and when we got there, Brother Morley got out of his Suburban. He was wearing the Scout shorts he got for a Jamboree; I made some remark about how dumb I thought they looked. We drove up to our campsite, which was called Peteetneet. I made a silly joke about how our camp was "small and tidy"--"petite neat." Most campgrounds were named after Indian nations (like Nez Perce and Crow), but ours was named after an individual. We set up our tents.

Everyone went swimming, but I think there was a medical form that hadn't been submitted in time for me to swim with them. My mom faxed it, so I was able to go later. When I went there, the scout workers there told me I could jump in whenever I was ready; it was sort of a swimming test. It took me a while to psych myself up to jump in to swim.

There was a scout assigned to work with our troop from Rochester, New York. I remembered the place he was from because I had just been to upstate New York; I remember asking if that was where all the news stations were based from (yes), and if he had heard of Pulaski (no).

Every morning, we had to come up with a song incorporating certain words. I did my best to come up with creative parodies with the words, but the kinds of songs I knew back then weren't popular at all. For the first day, I made a parody of the Marineland jingle I had heard on TV in New York, which ended with, "Everyone loves Troop 884!" I convinced my troop to sing it with me, but I don't think they really knew it, and the responses weren't that enthusiastic. One of the days, we had to use "steak and eggs," but we also needed to include the elements we had previously used. David Oder suggested, "Steak and eggs, just eat 'em," but I tried to come up with something else, since that was not creative and didn't have all the necessary elements. Brother Clark told me there wasn't time for something more complicated. One of the other troops always had a really creative song; among other things, they parodied The Brady Bunch and sang to the Mission: Impossible theme. Even if I had been able to create good songs, they would never have competed. Matt Miller started making one to the Taco Bell commercial popular at that time, which itself was a parody of the Bonanza theme, but it never got finished. Sometimes we had to shout things as well. One morning, we saw a flock of wild turkeys.

One day, I was walking around whistling the first theme song to I Dream of Jeannie, but since it was the less famous one, I don't think people knew what it was, which was probably a good thing. Cody Opperman made some comment amount my whistling, and I asked if he wanted me to stop. He said no, but I said, "I can tell you want me to stop, so I'll stop," and he thanked me. At some point I had said I liked I Love Lucy, and Cody paraphrased a line he had heard on the show, but his paraphrasing was a bit more vulgar than the original.

All the different scout workers had pseudonyms. I don't remember the name of ours, but one of the workers for an adjoining camp was 007. There was Snoopy, Melva, and Big Mac (whom one scout called Burger King, which I thought was dumb because they're not even the same franchise). One day, I was doing my fingerprinting merit badge, when I heard another troop whittling a stick for Snoopy. They were putting a picture of Snoopy on it, and their leader suggested putting Woodstock on it as well.

The infamous Jared Smith (a generic enough name that I can talk about him) came on this trip, and I can't say some of the things he said or did on it. He was a bit domineering, and David Christensen felt abused by him. As some of the leaders were coming and going, he had said that either Jared left or he left. Brother Morley took him aside and gave him "the talk," as David Oder put it, and he was better after that. It didn't help that he was in the same tent as a lot of us.

One of our first days, we went and did a basket weaving merit badge. We did a nature merit badge where I had to sit and observe nature. While I did that, I took some pine needles and broke them and tried to rub them on my skin so I would smell like a Christmas tree. That might have been the same badge for which we had to write about an endangered animal. I decided I wanted to write about koalas, and the counselor Melva pointed out I had a koala on my shirt, and I hadn't even realized that. One of the scouts from another troop said that koalas were cliché. I think Jaydon Bean wrote about prairie dogs.

While we were working on one merit badge, some scouts from my troop found a snake. They put it in a soda bottle. Later, there was a hole dug to put it in so it wouldn't be cooped up. As it was in the hole trying to climb out, David Christensen, who had lost his voice from all the morning yelling, said the snake was doing its morning exercise, and then he quoted The Lucy Show: "I'm doing my morning exercise, Mr. Moody!"

There was a little gift shop, and I got some clearance orange glow sticks and a Boy Scouts travel toothbrush. I was amused that the sticker on it said "Toothbrush BS." I used one glow stick one night (Jaydon told me to go put it in the cooler, as it wasn't completely dark yet) and I kept another one, thinking it would be good for Halloween.

Our little group of troops had to come up with a song, a one-liner skit, and a full-on skit. We sang a song about frogs that Brother Hale had taught us. Jared Smith had to be the star of both skits. The short one had him pulling a rope: "Hey, why are you pulling that rope?" "Have you ever tried pushing a rope?" Our scout adviser later told us he had never seen that one. The full skit was Rick Bean's idea. It involved us all running from a monster (Jared Smith) who was actually nice. Another troop did the exact same one. The ultra-creative group did a skit about pickup lines inspired by the Scout Law. The following night, all of the troops gathered together for the best songs and skits throughout. One troop sang something about "My Neighbors Lie Over the Ocean" and the creative troop did their pickup line skit. Yet another troop did the same skit we had done. There was also a relay triathlon, where some scouts swam, some biked, and some ran. Everyone was quietly laughing at the scout in the really tight purple swimsuit. That same night, some British scout workers did a skit where they put rubber gloves on their heads and inflated them, saying they were some kind of endangered chicken (apparently someone had written about them for a merit badge!). They also led us in a song about different merit badges: "Hug a hug a hug a tree," "Shoot 'em shoot 'em shoot 'em up," and some others. They also sang "Little Bunny Foo Foo," which was also the name of a pet rabbit at the camp.

After that, we took a back way to get back to our campsite, which was really far away. Jared Smith led the way, and he went way too fast, and I was slow, so everyone behind me was slow. I didn't like that way because it was too fast, and some scouts had been reprimanded for going that way in the daytime. One of those scouts was David Christensen, who was wearing a rain poncho when he was going that way, and after the scout worker called him down, some scouts from another troop wanted to accost him, but their leader told them not to.

One night, a group of scouts went out to look at the stars, and the scout worker asked everyone to turn off their lights.

After we left, we stopped at a gas station, where Ryan Jones got Jones soda. I saw a school named Peteetneet, which was the name of our campsite.