Take It Outside
When I was between 10 and 12 years old I did a couple of summers at day camp. I think it was a YMCA camp - up in the Sault. At the end of each 2 week session, we'd go on an overnight camping trip. The idea was to paddle a few canoes out to an island where there were tents already set up. Nothing too outdoorsy, but enough to make the camp administrators feel like the kids had, at least, mastered canoing.
Anyway, this one session ender the year I was 12 turned out to be SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. I remember we all assembled at the end of the camp day to do our camp song around the flagpole, holding hands, substituting dirty words for the real ones, and then the kids who wouldn't be joining us on the overnight campout got on the buses and left for home.
The boys headed off in one direction - they always went to a different overnight location than the girls (to prevent shenanigans - like i said, it was a YMCA camp) - and we girls headed off in another.
Things started out fine, it was mid-August so we all had what we'd need to stay warm through the night - it starts to get cool at night up there around that time in August - there were probably 5 or 6 canoes - maybe one counsellor/ten girls or so. And I remember there being at least three counsellors - as well as feeling pretty packed into the canoe, so, there were likely around 30 girls out on the water singing, "Ohhhhhhhhhhh, they built the ship Titanic, to sail the ocean blue" and so on down the list of tragicomic camp songs.
We paddled and sang and paddled and sang and then one of the counsellors suddenly yelled, "QUIET!" So we stopped and the counsellor, Patty?, Debbie?, Sue?, said in a surprisingly matter-of-fact voice: "I think we're lost."
Well, I certainly hadn't been paying any attention to where we were going. I'd just been paddling hard like a *1 canoing graduate. But I had noticed that my voice was hoarse and the songs were becoming ridiculous "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" had been the last round. Which was around the time I noticed it was getting dark, too. And within a few frantic minutes of searching for the map to the island where the tents were (the counsellor in charge had been winging it from memory until she realized we were lost) it was confirmed: WE WERE LOST!!! and it was confirmed: DARK! Not only that, but the map that had been found safely stashed in the counsellor in charge's backpack, turned out to be a Purple Lantern chinese food menu and even if we could see two feet in front of us, we still didn't have a map to the island with the tents.
We were REALLY lost then.
But being good little campers, and we'd all had at least 10 minutes of canoe lessons - which involved paddling out far enough into the water to tip it - not to mention the 2 or 3 hours of paddling we'd just done - we gamely paddled on without knowing exactly where we were going except, I guess, hoping to bump into an island in hopes that it would have nice cosy little tents set up all over it.
"Okay", said one of the lesser counsellors (we'd ceased singing and were inexplicably paddling harder'n ever to get... more lost? so she didn't have to yell, "QUIET!" like the now disgraced leader of the mission had earlier) "here's what we're going to do. We're going to stay put. Right here. Until it's light enough to see where we're going at least."
And that's what we did. We stayed put. Like good little camp girls we decided - the whole lot of us - that the safest thing to do was stay put. Wait until dawn. Then start paddling again. We spent the night playing cards - holding them right up to our faces to read them - and singing songs, telling ghost stories, making up bullshit about our families. And eventually, it was light enough to see.
Well... we must have drifted a fair bit in the night because if we'd waited much longer we would have bumped up against the dock of the main camp where the camp director was standing with a bullhorn and his faithful waterfront director at his side - these days people would call them: "GAY" - "Okay! Everybody out of the canoes! It's skinny dipping time followed by pancake breakfast time and nobody - NOBODY - is ever - EVER - going to mention this to their parents! Am I right?" "Yay! Skinny dipping! Right! Pancakes!"
And he was right. I was in my 20s when I mentioned that night to my Mom. What was really funny was her reaction to the unbelievable lack of planning and safety that had gone into that overnight camping trip (although I'm pretty sure I was at a YMCA camp because it WAS cheap): "I trust that religious nut of a camp director went into his office, at least, while all you girls were skinny dipping".
And you know... I really can't remember if he did... God. Leave it to my Mother...
