Scout leaders, tell me a funny camping story?
Posted: March 20th, 2010 | Author: Mitch | Filed under: Camping General | Tags: brainiacs, girl friends, hilarious tales, scout camp, scrap wood, tent | 4 Comments »Something that happened to you and your troop when you took them camping.
I’d cry if you broke my new tent, too.
Great story, Willie. My son works at scout camp, and has some hilarious tales, too. For example, this summer they wanted to get cell service so they could call their girl friends. (I’d say Moms, but would you believe it?) So they had the Hunters build a 12 foot tall platform out of scrap wood from Scoutcraft. Then they took turns climbing the thing to make their calls. My son was talking one evening, when three other staff guys came and climbed up with him, despite his advice against this. Of course, the tower collapsed. One guy was knocked silly, but all were fine. Brainiacs, eh?
This is a camp staff story…and most of my stories tend to be about the staff as I worked at many camps for close to 15 years.
Our Asst.Camp Director at summer camp in 1993 was a 22 or 23 year old fresh out of BSA professional school. He had been the Scoutcraft Director in 1987 and 1988 and now he was back. I’ll call him "Jim".
Jim had an large ego and the rest of the staff loved to mess with him. He had been the person-non-grata the whole season.
The staff tents all had power outlets that ran on a line out of the main staff lodge, but quite frequently the power would trip the breaker and someone would have to go into the lodge to reset it. The breaker box was in the closet of his room and he locked the closet all of the time. In years past, no one ever locked the closet…maybe he had his porn stash there, I don’t know. The room was not locked, just the closet.
One sunday during check-in the staff power went out and of course we couldn’t get to the breaker, so we unplugged all of his stuff and ran his extension cord outside and linked the tents up from the power that still worked from the building.
After an hour Jim came up to his room and saw that his alarm clock, VCR, Air Conditioner, etc were all unplugged and noted the extension cord was missing. He ran back down to the camp office, only like 50 yards away, and threw a hissy-fit in front of all of the parents checking their kids in, the Camp Director, Program Director, and the Scout Executive.
Meanwhile, we unplugged the extension cord, plugged everything back in in his room, reset the clock, and made it look like nothing ever happened. He comes running back up to the lodge with the Camp Director, Scout Executive, and Program Director in tow still ranting about how the staff doesn’t respect him and just making a fool of himself.
All four of them walk into his room and see that nothing appears to have been disturbed. The SE and the other directors all think he’s nuts and he gets a good tongue lashing from the Scout Executive about how he was carrying on for no reason.
Meanwhile, a lot of the staff members were sitting in the lounge section of the staff building watching TV and we all pretended like nothing was going on…trying like all hell not to start busting out laughing. The higher ups, except for the Program Director all leave and go back to the office. The PD hated Jim as well, so we let him in on the joke and by that time all 6 of us in the building were rolling on the floor.
It was the last week of camp and Jim dissapeared regularly that whole week and shortly thereafter left the professional service of the BSA.
There was this kid in our Troop, who was the highest rank and had the most merit badges, but he was such a crybaby. He’d be homesick at camp and not want to climb the greased flag pole or play tug of war into the mud because he was too embarrassed of his body to take more than one shower during the week for fear of someone seeing him naked. And when they told a scary story at the campfire punctuated by someone screaming off in the woods he started balling like a baby all the way back to our campsite. Once he threw up out the window of the scoutmaster’s SUV because he was car sick. Never knew any other kids who got car sick. Might as well have had a girl scout. He always wore his uniform too, which none of the other kids bothered to do, with his neckerchief and official slide and all the correct badges sewn on by his mother. Even had the BSA socks! He cried when someone fell on his new tent and broke a pole and when some kid kept flicking his ear when we were supposed to be standing at attention he finally snapped and chased the kid all over, finishing up with a crying and trying to walk home when he couldn’t catch the kid. After he suggested we break into Patrols and he just assumed because he was the oldest and most advanced scout he’d be chosen as Patrol Leader, but our Troop was a popularity contest so the kid who brought beer on our last hike was chosen Patrol Leader, and the scoutmaster brought that kid in before the weekly meeting and told him to find another troop because he cried and complained too much.
Schnurrb; You have my sympathies- sounds like a brutal Scout Troop- I hope your experience was the exception and not the rule- I thought that Boy Scouts were supposed to be taught what it takes to be decent human beings, not act like a bunch of little creeps.
Sorry, I don’t have any funny stories- I just wanted to comment on Schnuurb’s post.
When my son first started Scouting he was in " the "Thunderbird" patrol. On their first campout, they had NO clue on what they were doing.
I swear they thought they were going to die to food poisoning over the weekend because they did not know how to cook outdoors. Breakfast on Sunday consisted of undercooked panckes and fish. They survived and 50 percent of the initial patrol are now Eagle Scouts.