Back in my day...

Who doesn't love to hate those rants about how things in some one's childhood were so different than the equivalent period of someone else?

Get ready to hate me for that.

Over the weekend, my little sister and her Girl Scout troop went on a cam pout. I was asked, along with my dad, to help with the fire building, the outdoorsy cooking, protecting the little kids from the monsters in the woods and things of that nature.

Being an Eagle scout and someone who loves being in the woods, I jumped at the opportunity to go camping and fulfill some of Miguel's ideas about manliness... looking forward to wrestling bears and being boorish.

I guess I'm just that naive.

When I arrived I found the Girl Scouts primarily dressed in winter clothing my dad had brought, and the leaders were all bundled up like a misplaced Eskimo.
Wearing jeans, a light sweatshirt and a cowboy hat, I looked on and smiled, but that didn't last long.

The general lack of common sense was permissible, ya know, these kids are in 4th grade, they can learn, but the thing that got me was their disdain of helping people out.

The justification can be found in one simple interchange the Sunday morning that we were breaking camp.


I was working in the wintry mix taking down tents with my dad, wondering where the hell all the little kids are.

After we rolled up one tent, I took it to the truck, and found all the kids sitting at picnic tables. That's cool I guess.

I asked them if they were going to help take down the tents.

They stood there.

I asked again.

A little girl smiled at me.

I asked once more.

Still smiling, she said "Probably not, we're just standing here."

At that I walked away and ranted to myself for a while.
Holllllly crap.