The
last camp I went on that summer was a leadership camp called 'All
Stars' for scouts that were 14 years old. One other boy and I from
our town were invited to go so we car pooled up. It was held in a
canyon about an hour away from my house in some old Native American
camping sites so it was littered with old artifacts that we were
forbidden, by law, from touching , disturbing or collecting. Who
would place a group of two hundred fourteen-year-old’s in the midst
of a federal crime entrapment mess? All week long at camp we would
walk passed old piles of arrowhead chips and fought massive internal
battles of temptation to just pick one up and maybe no one would ever
know. I never took one but I am sure that the temptation was too
great for all to resist. When we rolled up to the camp the first
morning they pulled out all of our backpacks and did a contraband
check. We were not allowed to have fixed blade knives, no guns, and
no fuel or explosives. Talk about your kill-joys picking over every
object of pleasure and taking it away for safe keeping. They took all
three of my knives and my tomahawk as well as my lighters. I was not
super happy about that but what can one do in the face of tyranny? My
personal position is to not say anything when they come for then
knives because I am not a knife. We were taken down to be divvied up
and I met up with my new best friends. We did some get-to-know-you
and trust and skill exercises to see how we got along and during
these tasks I took charge and got us through well ahead of all of the
other teams. This made a good impression on the other boys and our
adviser and they voted me the team leader for the week. What they
didn't know was that as far as leadership went I was best in a sprint
and not to be trusted with long-term projects. Secondly, they were
not aware that I would have to tighten up my respect for the rule of
law quite a bit before I could qualify for playing fast and loose
with the rules. They did learn those things soon enough. It started
out with us needing to choose an animal name for our team and I
choose the double entendre rich animal name the 'Cocks'. We were then
supposed to come up with a team yell and I once again plunged right
over the good taste line with a yell rich in the language of
adolescent ribaldry clothed in the barest of disguises. When we
presented our name and yell the other boys found it amusing but the
camp adult leadership were not impressed and reassigned us the name
'Roosters' by fiat. The Roosters is a much less funny name and is
very hard to make into a funny rime even. After they crushed my
attempts at levity we were sent to our camp sites to build Ewoks.
