Draft of the Foreword to a book I am currently writing

Foreword

When I was the impressionable age of 15, I applied to work for a Scout Camp. The world knows camps of all shapes and sizes, of all purposes and positions, from the Boy Scout^© week long camps to the gruelling (and sometimes ineffectual) fat camp; from the lucky few who go to Space Camp to the poor souls shipped off to some sort of military camp. I hear that just on Wednesdays, they go through a soul crushing, verbally abusive Root Beer Canteen and then a campfire where they do skits as drill songs:

“I don’t know, but it’s been heard, he moved the invisible bench over there. Sound off…”

The Camp I worked for is called Camp Eastman. It is a neat property, owned fully by the Boy Scouts of America™^©, located just outside of Nauvoo, Illinois. The camp itself has some unique features, being located on the Mississippi River, there is a great deal of boating to be had there. “You don’t know good Eastman until you stare down a four-thousand ton river barge in the middle of the channel with a slack sail and nothin’ but your wits and a broken daggerboard to get you by” is a common saying at camp that I just made up.

I worked for this camp for 7 years, almost exclusively as a member of their Cub Camp staff. Cub Camp is an excellent program, for registered Cub Scouts®™ from the 2^nd  through 5^th grades. The Scouts and their parents get to come for four days of boating, fishing, crafts, swimming, campfires, and failing to put up tents properly.

The people that I worked with over these years stick with me like few others I have yet to come across. I had only a few good friends in the high school that I attended. In a small town that has just one school, you get to know the same people and they all know you. The class I was in had 59 students, of which 55 were in Kindergarten with me. I fared much better in college, being around new people, those who didn’t have memories of playing Mozart in the elementary music program or remember you as the kid who ran around singing the Ninja Turtle theme song at recess.

The friends at camp got to know me, the more real me. Better than anyone with whom I went to high school, better than I perhaps knew myself. These were the friends who I talked to about their dreams, their wants, their desires. These are the friends who swapped jokes and stories late into the night. Friends who got me through the long doldrums of life back in that small town, where nobody really knows you. These are the friends who would brag about their new girlfriend, or seek consoling or mutual wrath when a relationship is in shambles. These are the friends whose weddings I attended, who I would try to see if I could get back near them again. We still swap pictures, update on our new families, and send well wishes on for successes.

Because of these people, I would not be where I am today. So it’s all their fault.

Really, I owe an awful lot to them. Many of them helped me earn my rank of Eagle Scout™, provided encouragement or advice along the way, and still more of them showed up at my award ceremony. Probably due to the promise of cake.

The people  I talk about in this book are special to me. Some of them I haven’t talked to in a year. Some in five. I do wish I could be back with them all again, sitting around a campfire or dining hall table. Swapping catch phrases like “That’s sexual harassment in the workplace and I don’t have to take it- but I will”. These people have been some of my best friends.

A note to those who do not appear in this book: Time, type, and memory will always begin to fog out the recollection of past events. There are many people with whom I shared great experiences in my seven years at camp. I believe that I was on staff with around 200 separate individuals while there, some were annual returns, some for less than one season. I wish no offense to those who find little or no mention in this book, and if you do take offense, then write your own book, you twit. Or you could send my your own memory and I will endeavour to include it in a subsequent re-printing, re-posting, or re-brain direct update, whatever medium we are on in the near future.

Furthermore, some names have been changed to protect the innocent, the incarcerated, or the insane. I will choose to use mainly and only first names except where inappropriate, where I may choose to use pseudonyms, only last names, nicknames, whatever strikes my whimsy. Some of the people who shared with me in these experiences have gone on to be, somehow, some level of successful in their post-camp lives. We have Police Officers, Military Servicemen (and women), Librarians, Teachers, and Engineers, among others.

I should hate for them to have the inconvenience of additional fame or success deriding from this publication.

Finally, it should be noted that I am not (or rather, no longer) an official representative for the Boy Scouts of America^©™^®αΩ and am merely relaying my experiences experienced through an association with this association. The Boy Scouts of America ^{etc. etc.} are holders of the trademarks of copyrights to their own namesake and varied derivatives, including Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, Venturing, BSA, Valderie, and Valderah.

Put on your favourite uniform, gather ‘round the campfire, and get out your industrial grade bug spray, and a harpoon to do your part and stave off the wolf spider apocalypse. We didn’t make a sacrificial offering to them this week.

Clint Parry