Campfire Song

This weekend I went with Sara's Brownie Troop for an overnight at Girl Scout Camp.  This is only the 2nd overnight that we have attempted - the first having been the overnight at the Zoo last year.  And this was the first time we spent the night at camp. 

Now, you must remember a couple of things about me and Brownies.  First of all, my patience with these girls lasts for roughly 45 minutes.  Then I'm ready to snap and send them all home.  Which works somewhat ok in meetings, because even though the meetings run for an hour and a half, the girls are usually well contained in a classroom for the duration of the meeting.  And I can therefore leave for short periods of time to compose myself.

Secondly, we had 11 girls that went.  2nd and 3rd grade girls.  And oh for the love of God, the screaming.  The shrieking.  The incessant baby talk.  The jumping up and down.  My brain cannot process such behavior except to say "Make it stop!  My God, make it stop!"

And no, I don't know why I volunteer as an assistant leader.  It seems unwise of the Girls Scouts organization as a whole to allow me to continue to be around girls of an impressionable age who are working on developing their self-esteem.  Our leader is seriously awesome, as is the other assistant leader.  But our leader is a dad and by Girl Scout law, he has to have a certain number of moms around.  So I guess I'm really just a statistical necessity.  Which, okay.  I'm good with that.  I have a fair amount of experience in being a statistic.

Actually, it all went better than I had expected.  No one cried to go home.  No one was seriously injured.  I did not do anything that would later show up on 48 Hours or could be used as an episode of Law and Order.  I did threaten to send 8 of them home at one point but the threat seemed to stop them in their tracks and make them think, which is all I really wanted anyway.  Fine, what I really wanted was to go home and watch tennis, but that wasn't going to happen.

Mitch and Jacob were horrified that we went camping in a cabin with a full kitchen (minus a dishwasher - hey, we had 11 kids to do the dishes!) and a full bathroom (if you wanted to scrub the dirt and bugs out of the shower that is).  Truth be told, we were in the Staff Lodge, which is exactly what is sounds like, where the staff stays during the summer.  So yes, it was a little less hardcore camping than Boy Scouts.  And yes, probably even easier than regular Girl Scout camping.  But these girls are between 7-9 years old and this was their first real campout.  So if anyone wants to judge us, go ahead, but next time we'll make you go with us.  And then you can see the joy that was my weekend.

It rained Saturday night and that forced us indoors (to our cabin, I know, but still - SHUT UP) from dinnertime until Sunday morning.  So there were microwave s'mores (SHUT UP) instead of over the campfire and they built marshmallow shooters, but weren't allowed to shoot them.  None of the adults were up to spending all day Sunday sweeping up mini marshmallows from the cabin.  We made them go to bed at 9:30 PM, and then they told ghost stories one by one until 11.  And wow - those ghost stories were terrible.  Not one included the phrase "Give me back my golden arm", which was a mainstay of all ghost stories when I was their age.  All of the stories started with "Once upon a time there were 11 girls scouts...".  Not very creative.  But no one was scared, which was very good. 

There was a major storm that blew through, but since we were in the very sturdy Staff Lodge and we had really and truly tired these girls out, everyone slept through it without incident.  They were all up by 7 AM.  We got cleaned up, packed up, and had them all back to school by noon, which was the plan.  I think I was not the only leader happy to see them all head home with their parents.

Next year, if we are still here, Sara's group is it's own group again, since the 2nd graders will still be Brownies, while she and her friends will be Juniors.  She and her friends are a good group and I've always enjoyed them.  It's some of the younger ones that can drive me insane.  Not that it's a long trip there.