Cub Scouts.
Is there any activity more thrilling, more rejuvenating, more feel-good-about-yourself fun than taking a six-year-old on a campout with 200 other overstimulated boys? Apart from the day I got my do-it-yourself home lobotomy kit, I can't think of a time I was more excited than when I went with my stepson to the Cub Haunted Weekend at Camp Winnataska in lovely Analpimple, Alabama.
My stepson had been exposed to the Cub Scouts through friends at school. Bless his little six-year-old heart, he fell in love with the thought of carving a ten-inch-long racecar, learning about nature, and going on campouts.
Ah, yes. The campouts.
"It'll be fun!" my wife chirped incessantly. "You two can bond! And there'll be so much to do! He's so excited about it! Don't worry about me! I'm sure I'll find something to do with you two gone for 24 hours! Besides miss you two, I mean! You know I love you! Now for the love of God get out of my house!"
Five minutes after we pulled away, her friend Michelle came over and they ate four gallons of Mayfield Turtle Tracks ice cream while Chippendales danced on my furniture. I found g-strings and dollar bills between the couch cushions for WEEKS.
But I digress. In preparing for the campout, I attempted to learn some pertinent information about the event. It's been more than 30 years since I was in Cub Scouts, and even then my dad didn't go on campouts with me. In fact, I don't think Cub Scouts even went camping 30 years ago. All I remember is we used to meet after school in an unused back room that had a papier-mache volcano in it. I think it was somebody's old science project that was being stored, but I suppose it could have been a portal to Hell. My memory isn't what it used to be.
So I'm going over the list of things to bring, as recommended by the local Cub Scout Pack Leader (Motto: "If I've got to spend my spare time around 200 boys, then I'm going to make you miserable, too"). Some items were fairly obvious (sleeping bags, flashlights), while others were a bit ominous (a stomach-pump kit "just in case"). They also listed toilet paper, which should have been a tipoff to me. It's not possible to have a good time on a trip that requires you to bring your own toilet paper.
"You'll be in a bunkhouse!" screeched the Pack Mother, a matronly woman whose frantic energy level made me believe she could get excited about watching rocks race. "There'll be a bonfire! And activities! Your meals are included! Be sure to bring some Band-Aids and a tourniquet! Just in case!" Naturally, she was not going on this campout. As she walked away from me during the planning meeting, which was about two weeks before the actual campout, I could hear her shouting into her cell phone. "What do you mean, the Chippendales are completely booked that night? Every one of them? How is that possible?"
The strange thing is, although we were encouraged several times to bring the stomach pump, and the tourniquet, and the morphine, and the snakebit kit, and the myriad of other "just in case" items, nobody mentioned to me the one crucial item that would be necessary to survive the weekend with my sanity intact.
Earplugs.
My stepson and I got to the camp late Friday afternoon, and at first everything was okay. We found our bunkhouse, which was last cleaned when Roosevelt was in the Oval Office (Teddy, not Franklin). We had metal bunk beds with mattresses, although I was fervently grateful we brought sleeping bags. These mattresses looked like the inside of a Chippendale's g-string. A very old Chippendale's g-string, belonging to a Chippendale who sweats a lot. And has some sort of crotch fungus.
So anyway, we settled in and did the typical nighttime activities at this camp -- a hayride, and going through a haunted house, and flinging pumpkins with catapults, and "jousting" in wheelbarrows, and various and sundry other activities. The evening ended at 10:30 with a bonfire that attracted bugs from as far away as Arkansas. My stepson was irked with me for not bringing any marshmallows to roast over the fire, but I pacified him by letting him put the rubber hose of the stomach pump in the embers. We bonded as we watched it bubble and smoke.
Finally we retired to bed. Our bunkhouse had approximately 30 other boys and dads in it, one of whom was an Assistant Pack Leader. As he lowered his round self into the bed, he remarked, "I hope y'all remembered to bring earplugs, because I snore very, very loudly." There were a few chuckles. And then it happened.
I was in the top bunk, because my stepson didn't want to sleep on top. Immediately to my right was a boy who was about eight years old at the time. His dad was in the lower bunk. So the man was maybe six feet away from me.
The instant the Assistant Pack Leader finished saying "I hope you brought earplugs", this dad cut loose with one of the loudest snores I have ever heard in my life. It was the type of snore that people make intentionally when they’re joking about how loud someone snores. It’s entirely possible that sound waves from that snore are what really caused global warming.
A few folks laughed a bit, as people always do when someone makes the obvious joke in such a situation. Ha-ha, demonstration of a loud snore right after someone else says they snore loudly. Oh, the humor. It is to laugh.
But then this guy snored again, even louder. The laughter abruptly stopped. Uneasy glances were exchanged. Far off in the distance, a wolf howled.
And so the night began. You may remember this night – it was the longest night in recorded history. I laid in my bunk, hands crossed behind my head (I remembered the stomach-pump kit, but I forgot pillows), feeling crotch fungus attempting to crawl onto my body, and watched the ceiling sink approximately eight inches every time this guy inhaled. And the exhales weren’t any better, either. He sounded like someone had stuffed a used Chippendale’s g-string in his sinuses when he tried to breathe out. It was one of those snuffly, phlegmy-sounding exhales, like when you jam the back of your tongue against your uvula and then try to breathe out through your mouth.
This went on for several decades. And then the unthinkable happened – the Assistant Pack Leader also began snoring. How he went to sleep is beyond me, what with all the bunks being moved back and forth across the room from the force of the snorer’s breathing. But he did. His snoring wasn’t as bad as Dr. Snoreslots, but it was pretty impressive on its own.
So now we had some sort of sleep-induced version of Duelling Banjos going on in our bunkhouse. Dr. Snorelots would play a sinus riff, and Assistant Pack Leader would respond with a uvulatic paradiddle. Then they would join forces in an impressive tonsil-rattling crescendo, the results of which are still giving seismologists wet dreams as they examine their instrument recordings from the evening.
Just as I despaired of ever getting any sleep that night, inspiration struck, and shortly thereafter, blessed silence reigned. I managed to sleep about three hours.
For legal reasons, I don’t want to fully explain what happened. Let’s just say that, even after being exposed to a bonfire, the tubing from a stomach-pump kit makes a pretty dang good garrote.
And as an added bonus, I was awarded the “Community Service” merit badge by my bunkmates.
(c) 2012 John Puckett
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