Two Cubs and a Boy Scout

I don’t do camping. I’ll spend all day and half the night tramping around the bush getting dirty and getting bitten, but when it’s time for bed, I want an honest-to-god bed and a hot shower waiting.

Melani, though, gets as excited as a schoolgirl when it’s time to take her Cub pack to Tamaracouta or the new Jackson Dodds. Trevor swam up to Scouts and is about to move on to Venturers, but he travels as Mel’s kim.

I’m the Parent Who Drives. Thus, I sometimes end up with more children for the ride home from mountainous Milles Iles than I had when I made the drive up.

I might not like camping, but I love having three boys who smell like woodsmoke in the back seat of my car, all trying to decide what they liked best about their camping weekend. The skits? The treasure hunt? The canteen?

And the camp songs. How do they know all the camp songs? I mean, not just the songs they sang that weekend, but a repertoire of every song that has ever been sung at any camp ever in the history of Scouting. I swear it’s true. This one ends with a bang:

I had a little chicken that wouldn’t lay an egg.
So I ran hot water up and down his leg.
(I ran hot water up and down his leg.)

The darn old chicken laid a boiled egg. Scouts Canada
(A boiled egg, a boiled egg)
The darn old chicken laid a boiled egg.