I Slept With A What?

Now before my loyal readers, either of you, get worried about the title and cancel their plans to make a pilgrimage to my hometown this summer...to see where the magic happens of course, let me assure you that I have not taken a turn for the bawdy.  My blog is, and will forever be, "G" rated.  Although there was that time I got a little testy with the TSA over people being unclothed, photographed, and/or groped while traveling to see grand-ma-ma.  But even then I only dipped into the "PG 13" range..."PG 11" if you get right down to it.  But I digress...

This is a story that, again, I love to tell.  I usually drag it out when I am camping with the scouts or the youth group at my church but this last weekend with junior highers in the snow the situation didn't arise.  Now the story is just itching to be told.  It is a story of courage, heart, true friendship, and undergarments.

Way back when I was in junior high I was lucky enough to go to camp with my friend for a week.  It was a Christian camp named Alliance Redwoods and it was a blast.  It was where I spent the first nights away from my family.  It was where I saw my first shooting star.  It was where I learned what a true friend would do when it came right down to it. 

Mike was my buddy.  It was on the condition that Mike was going that I agreed to go to camp at all.  He was more adventurous and had gone the year before and survived.  I guessed I could try it.  We were always together, Mike and I.  This was back in the day when boys were allowed to ride miles to their friends' houses in the morning and not be seen, or heard from, again until the streetlights came on.  And even then it was only to check in, show that we were alive, and then go out again until goodness knows when.  This was who I would be relatively comfortable with when I went to camp.

At Alliance Redwoods there was the usual camp stuff.  There were rustic cabins, hiking trails, swimming pool, and one night when they "let" us sleep outside in the woods.  I grew up with practical joker cousins.  I had heard stories about mythical creatures that roamed the woods looking for little boys who step outside the ring of light from the lantern, to water a tree, and are never heard from again.  But I couldn't let anyone know, so off we went marching into the woods.  Carrying our sleeping bags we hiked for what seemed like an eternity, but in reality was probably about 300 yards from our cabin. 

This is the point in the story where one of my ever-helpful children will remind me, "Isn't this when you tripped over a stump?" 
"Yes, kids, this is where I tripped over a stump.  It was a stump that was about two feet wide and three and a half feet tall and everyone laughed because only a moron would not see a stump in the path that was that big...ha ha ha...can I get back to the story now?"  My kids are always so helpful.

We set up "camp" right there on a hillside in a clearing that was just big enough for eight boys and one counselor to lay side by side, in only their sleeping bags, for the night.  The counselor talked about this and that.  The other boys tried to talk about girls and mythical boy-stealing creatures but the counselor steered them, thankfully, away from that.  I had no actual experience with either at this point in my shy little life...and couldn't imagine any in the foreseeable future. 

As we were laying on our backs looking up at the sky, the conversation turned to the wonderful glory of God and how awesome the stars were and that shooting stars were cool.  I said, "I've never seen a shooting starrrrr." And as my words were hanging in the air...a shooting star started on the left and moved perfectly across the entire clearing, from horizon to horizon.  It was magical.  I have only seen one shooting star that came even close to how perfect this amazing meteor was...but that is a story for another day.  (someone remind me that I was going to write about it...ok?)

And now I am finally to what I really wanted to talk about.  Ever since the first night of camp, when I got into my sleeping bag, I noticed that there was something in there with me.  No problem.  I knew: a) it was not alive, b) it wasn't formerly alive, and c) it wasn't coming out of the bottom of my sleeping bag for anyone else to see. 

I would like to explain that I have been with enough groups of boys while camping to know that there is nothing funnier than underwear.  There is also nothing more embarrassing.  When I was a chaperon for Jake's science camp a few years back I was having the boys straighten up.  There was a pair of tidy whiteys in the middle of the floor.  Cabin, spotless...except for that.  No one claimed it.  We seriously threw them away because not a soul would admit that it belonged to them.  I even tried the "we'll turn off the lights and you just run out and grab them" trick.  Nothing.  And then I told them this story.

So now I have revealed what I suspected.  I figured it was a pair of underwear that I left in there accidentally when I changed clothes on one of the numerous times that I had a sleepover at Mike's house.  Having everyone see this would have been torture.  They would have had to call my parents to come pick me up.  I spent the entire week not sleeping because of nerves and having my feet bump into something that was not coming out to see the light of day until I got home...I thought. 

Back to the hillside, the other boys, and my buddy Mike.  The counselor woke everyone up and said that if we didn't get moving we would miss breakfast at the camp (always a motivator).  Being a  hungry sleep deprived junior high school aged boy I was, almost by definition, brain damaged.  We all got up and started to shake our sleeping bags to clear away the dirt, wood chips, spiders, ants, centipedes, scorpions, and unfortunately, underwear from our sleeping bags.  There in the woods I lost my mind and grabbed the tail end of my sleeping bag.  I brought it up once, down, up again, and down...with enough force to wriggle loose and then fling the offending nuisance out of the bag.  It was as I expected...underwear.  The problem was, it was far worse than I could have imagined.  It was, in fact, my worst nightmare!  You see, it was not mine!

In the slow motion of that moment I saw my sister's double-barreled slingshot go tumbling through the air and land softly on the ground about twenty feet away.  This is where the men are separated from the boys folks.  With the skill and determination of a hardened Marine, Mike dove and landed on the bra like he was protecting his platoon from a live grenade.  He had seen what had happened, assessed the situation, and neutralized the offending article before anyone was even aware of what happened.  I ran over with my bag, shoved it inside, and rolled up my sleeping bag all the while giving Mike eyes that hopefully said, "THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!!!!"

The rest of the week was awful.  Had word gotten out I would have been ruined.  I toyed with the idea of throwing it away.  I couldn't do that to my parents...they paid good money for our things.  I even considered pretending to find it and make a big joke out of it.  Humor?  As a defense mechanism?  That'll never catch on.  So I toughed it out.  I had to knowingly climb into a sleeping bag with "one of those."

I am also sworn to never let my sister live it down.  If you would like to comment to her directly her name is Susan and she reads this blog.  I'm thinking of embroidering this story onto a pillow for her...or better!  A sleeping bag!

Now for a public service announcement: 
I am asking all of you to please, for the sake of your children, label your sleeping bags.