Camp Laramie Peak

I recently spent a week with my 12-year-old son at Camp Laramie Peak Boy Scout Camp in Wyoming.

This is the second summer that my son and I have attended a scout camp.  Last summer, we enjoyed a week in the beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota at Medicine Mountain (I say “enjoyed” only because it didn’t suck as much as Camp Laramie Peak).

(at Medicine Mountain, we actually set our tents right inside Washington’s nostril… who knew there was an entire scout camp inside the heads of the dead presidents?!?)

Ahh… sleeping on the ground in a tent as the rain pounds down and the winds gust up to 90 MPH, what could be more fun?

I am an Assistant Scoutmaster.  This means that I don’t want (and am far from qualified for) the position of Scoutmaster, but I like helping the kids reach their goals.  I am not an utterly complete pessimist (although I am within spitting distance), and I really do believe in trying to help young people find a measure of success.  I have been a leader in scouts since my son was a tiger cub and he is now a Second Class Boy Scout.  This means I have been involved in scouting for around six years.  Six years is far longer than I have held any single job with any single employer.  Let’s face it… I’m a quiter.  When life throws an obstacle or stress my way, I quit.  Quitting is easy, and starting something new is exciting, so there you have it.  When something starts sucking, I quit; but I have never quit scouting (although, trust me, I have been very tempted).

Camp overall was pretty good (the food kind of sucked and there wasn’t enough of it, the weather was horrible,  getting up early bites, etc.etc.etc. and all the other stuff I could go on and on bitching about) considering these camps are meant to build character in boys.  I’m old and my crappy character is beyond help, so I tend to look at these camps as a chore and not a vacation (even though I have to use up precious vacation to attend).

Something that really struck me with camp this year was the way the counselors were “looking out” for the scouts.  If you’ve ever been to a scout camp, you know that the majority of the counselors are not that much older than the scouts.  Many of the counselors are high school and college kids just pulling a summer gig.  It was easy to tell these counselors had been trained on how to make sure a kid isn’t being abused.

During this camp, many of us adult leaders went through “safety training”, which is little more than “how to cover your ass as an adult male when working with young boys”.  I’d like to throw a big thanks out to all of the stupid pedophiles and the Catholic Church for making this stinking training necessary.  Never be alone with a scout; never touch a scout; if you suspect a scout is being abused in any way, shape or form inside or outside of scouting, let the district council know (not the police, not the boy’s parents, not any kind of authoritative figure in the boy’s life whatsoever… the disctrict council; all of this is to cover your and BSA’s asses).  The training really didn’t make it seem like we volunteer our time to help the boys succeed.  The training really focused on how not to get Boy Scouts of America sued.  Ah… what a wonderful world we live in.

Anyway, back to the counselors.  Anyone who has spent a week with boys ranging in age from 17-years-old all the way down to 11-years-old knows that an 11 and 12-year-olds who are away from their mothers can have, well, to put it politely, mild emotional breakdowns.  These vary from slight bouts of teary-eyed whininess to full-blown tantrums.  On this trip, I got to deal with a couple of full blown tantrums, and during each tantrum, a counselor happened to walk by right smack in the middle of each.

When a young boy throws a tantrum, one of the first things he tends to do is try to stomp off on his own to show how mad he is.  Of course, at scout camp, the boys are required to use the buddy system.  There is to be no stomping off.  A boy eaten by a mountain lion wouldn’t be good for BSA’s image.  So when the boy with the attitude starts stomping off, you must stop him.  Of course, you can’t touch the boy, so, at times, you have to raise your voice to get the boy to understand that he seriously can’t stomp off by himself.  This is exactly what was happening with the first instance.  A group of scouts was heading to a merit badge class for the afternoon and I was escorting them.  One of the boys started getting, well, kind of tantrumy, because he wanted to hang around camp instead of going to the merit badge counseling.  The more I told him he needed to go to his counseling, the less he wanted to go… until he got pissed-off and started stomping off.  Of course, I couldn’t let him stomp off by himself, so I told him to get back with the group.  He kept walking and the further he got away, the more I had to raise my voice.  Finally, I ran to the boy and stood in front of him.  “C’mon, man, get back with the group,” I told him.  At this point is when the teen-aged counselor was walking by.  The counselor stopped right beside us and looked straight at the scout.

“Are you okay?” the counselor asked.

“He’s fine,” I responded.  “He’s just doesn’t want to go to his counseling and he thinks he needs to stomp off by himself.”

The counselor completely ignored me.  He continued to look at the scout, “Are you okay?”

The scout finally responded, “Yeah, I’m fine,” to which the counselor simply turned and continued on his way.

As I watched the teen get farther and farther away, it popped into my head to yell, “Thanks for the help; couldn’t have done it without you,” but I thought better of it.  It still took some time and effort to get the upset scout to rejoin our group, with no help from the interfering counselor.   I figured that the counselors were trained to do exactly what this one had just done, which made me feel a little like a turd clinging to the side of the toilet bowl of scouting… but that’s why I volunteer my time, right?

Second instance was similar.  One of the scouts wanted to borrow some money from me to buy some crap at the trading post.  I have made it an official rule of mine that I do not lend money to scouts for unnecessary items.  I have seen other leaders get burned in the past by lending scouts money and never receiving that money back.  I volunteer my time… because time is more precious than money (and I have more time than I do money).  Well, the fact that I wouldn’t lend the scout cash so he could buy an energy drink (yeah, just what I needed was a hopped-up 11-year-old to watch after for the afternoon), apparently was enough to send him into a stomping-away tantrum.

Right, crap, here we go again.  I start hollering for the boy to rejoin the group right as a counselor is walking by.  The scout is crying and whatnot because that stupid energy drink is so flipping important to him at that moment in time.  I jog up to the scout right as the counselor is asking “Are you okay?”

For crying-out-flipping loud!  These guys probably report all of this crap back to the “district council” and I’m gonna look like a child beater or something.  “He’s just mad because I wouldn’t lend him money to buy a stupid energy drink,:” I explain, feeling a little stupid for having to explain the situation to an acne-faced teenager.

The counselor doesn’t acknowledge me at all, never taking his eyes of the boy.  “Is there anything I can do?” the counselor asks the scout.

By this time, I’m getting to the verge of throwing a tantrum.  I feel like I’m very discreetly being accused of doing something wrong.  I spent my own money to “volunteer” my time to go to camp and help BSA accomplish it’s mission.  I was not spending my time and money to be ignored and accused.  I’m getting pissed.

I sooo wanted to say, “I’m glad your offering assistance, ’cause it’s so much easier to smack them silly if someone holds them… can you grab his arms?” just to see what kind of response I could get out of the counselor, but I didn’t.  The scout finally shaped up and we all went our separate ways.

So, I guess the moral of the story is counselors at scout camps are trained to cover the ass of the camp, adult leaders are trained to cover not only their own asses but the ass of BSA, and the whole stupid thing makes me wonder if it’s really worth having to cover my ass to volunteer my time and money to an organization that apparently a lot of people want to sue.

You know, maybe I’m looking at this from the wrong angle.  Maybe I should be looking for a reason to sue.  You know, all of the stupid bagels they served at the mess hall did tend to go straight to my ass… making it that much harder to cover.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

I could sue for that, couldn’t I?