I saw you’re an eagle scout! I have this stupid story: in my first winter camp out, I fell through the ice on a stream when I was walking around and I came back drenched and then my troop leader had me strip and hang everything by the fire and gave me a big blanket to huddle in. Anyways I forget ab those clothes and went over to eat and I come back and my pants socks and all my underlayers for warmth had all cought fire :) and to put it out I just dumped my soup on them cuz I was panicking. I’ve since improved at camping ofc but I’m known as “holy fuck my socks are one fire” guy
anyways, share cool stories! I wanna hear other ppls stories to feel better ab my self
This is beautiful, thank you for sharing your scout stories! "Holy fuck my socks are on fire" guy would have fit right into my troop, right next to "Take Two Steps Back And get Ready to Jump!"
This is a tale of my second ever campout, way back when I was but a wee 13 year old, and we were doing our first ever leadership training.
At the time, our troop was organized into 4 patrols. And yes, all the nicknames I use in this are nicknames we actually had.
The Book Thieves/The Girls Troop: which consisted of 4 members, all of us aged 12-14.
The Samurais: A quartet of boys aged 12-14 with a lot of enthusiasm and not a lot of brains.
The Fallout Duckies: a large patrol of boys who only sometimes showed up, but on this campout had ~5 members, aged 14-16.
The Pakana Patrol: The oldest patrol of most experienced boys, ages 15-17. On this particular campout, there were 4 of them: Two brothers, Nora (younger, patrol leader) and Cassie (older, senior in high school), a Texas transplant called Veronica, and the scoutmaster's son Joe Mama.
We did a lot of different ridiculous activities as part of our leadership training, from cooking as a patrol (my patrol didn't know how to turn on a gas stove), tenting as a patrol (my shoes got destroyed because it was wet and pouring and I had to borrow a leader's spare muck boots), and doing patrol skits (where the Samurais hit each other with sticks, called it Mortal Kombat, and were subsequently banned from ever doing Mortal Kombat again. "No Mortal Kombat" remained on the ban list all the way until my graduation, and as far as I know, it's still there).
The most notable example though, was the blindfolded obstacle course. As a practical demonstration of how you need to trust your patrol leaders and work with them, the leaders set up an obstacle course of rocks and sticks. All patrol members except for the patrol leader were then blindfolded, and the PL had to guide them through the course without touching any of the rocks or sticks. If somebody touched something, everybody had to restart the course.
My PL Bob was known for finding and using loopholes (she did Congress in Speech and Debate), and this was no exception. Our patrol went first and she carefully guided all of us to the edge of the obstacle course and we just went straight around all of the obstacles. After the leaders banned that particular trick, the Samurais and the Fallout Duckies each made a quick and valiant effort with several restarts apiece.
Then it was the Pakanas turn, and the leaders were not letting them off the hook that easily. They had the most experience out of everyone and they had just had a chance to watch 3 other patrols do it. They blindfolded the Pakanas, and then rearranged the obstacle course to be much more difficult, with little tripods of sticks and rock quarries all over the place. But the piece de resistance was of course The Benches. The leaders had grabbed two benches and stacked them up on top of each other right in the middle of the course. They spanned the whole thing---there would be no going around.
Keep in mind that most of the Pakanas had no idea what they were about to go through. Nora stared at the course in absolute disbelief, and then, resigned to his fate, began guiding the guys through.
While the previous patrol leaders had tried to keep everyone at roughly the same spot on the course, Nora decided it would be easier to guide them through one at a time. After leaving his brother Cassie to rot at the starting line and guiding Veronica and Joe Mama halfway through the course, he finally had to face the obstacle of The Benches. After doing about two laps around the course to see it from every possible angle, Nora had apparently decided that the only way to get these three dudes past the benches---all of whom were taller than 5' 9"---was to make them go under.
He ordered Joe Mama on to the floor and had him army crawl through the two square feet between the bench posts. Once he was safely on the other side, he informed Joe Mama he was now in timeout. Joe Mama was all like "Was it really necessary for me to drag myself through the muddy floor?" and Nora was all "YES NOW SHUT UP!"
Joe Mama then ordered one of the Samurais to fetch him his hot cocoa, and spent the rest of this little adventure sardonically commenting on how it sure would be nice to not just stand here in the freezing cold and covered in mud, to which everybody else was like "shut up, you're not special."
Since Joe Mama was rather annoyed about the mud, Nora decided to take a slightly different approach for Veronica. Nora guided him to a low spot between the two benches and shouted one of the most quoted lines in my scout troop, to this day: "ALRIGHT NOW TAKE TWO STEPS BACK AND GET READY TO JUMP!"
Veronica, predictably went "I'M NOT JUMPING YOU IDIOT, I'M BLINDFOLDED!"
It was at this point that the leaders realized they should probably add some guidance before somebody got hurt. One of the scoutmasters said "Nora, you can tell them which obstacles you're trying to take them around."
To which Nora responded: "Oh! Good point! Veronica, I'm about to make you crawl under a bench,"
(cue Joe Mama: "WHAT THE HECK YOU GUYS, I WENT UNDER A BENCH???")
He very carefully proceeded to guide Veronica on the exact same path as Joe Mama, all the time stressing, "NO YOU CANNOT LIFT YOUR HEAD UP, YOU'LL HIT THE BENCH!" Do keep in mind that Veronica was even taller.
(After Veronica was safely past this part of the course, Cassie took it upon himself to complain "Can I come out of timeout now?" Nora's response: "Cassie, SIT DOWN!" Cassie remained seated for the better part of this journey)
Nora navigated Veronica and Joe Mama out of the way so that Cassie would have room to crawl underneath the bench.
At last it was Cassie's turn. While guiding him through, Nora, who did not know his left from his right, had Cassie on the floor and said "I need you to move your foot. . . *holds up his hands in L shapes*. . . LEFT!" He needed Cassie to go right. Cassie went right because these two share a brain cell.
With the unencouraging and cries from his teammates about how "If you make us go under that thing again Cassie, we'll kill you in your sleep," Cassie did finally finally make it underneath the bench, and the three boys did make it across the finish line, after 15 minutes and no restarts.
We did, in fact, get their reactions on film, and this anecdote was one of the most retold in my entire time in scouting. Nora would never escape being the guy who said "TAKE TWO STEPS BACK AND GET READY TO JUMP," and no blindfolded obstacle courses were ever quite the same.
