CAMPING OUT NOT SO FUN ANYMORE

My priorities change as I get older. When I was young, I used to beg to camp out. Pitch a tent, stay up late, and swap manly stories with all my buddies. Sneak out and go swimming in somebody’s outdoor pool without them knowing it. That sorta thing.

Nowadays I have no ambitions of skinny dipping, sleeping on the hard ground, or staying up much past bedtime. But those boys of mine sure do. Problem is we haven’t always had much luck with the whole campout thing.

On my oldest son’s 8^th birthday, he invited a group of eight boys over to spend the night in our backyard. Guess which parent was obliged to grab a sleeping bag and chaperone all the little delinquents.

By 10:35 p.m., five kids- including the oh-so-brave birthday boy- had bailed out and entered the back door to the house. The remaining three giggled, belched, and performed other sorts of grotesqueness, including the old hand-under-the-armpit sound effect- for hour upon miserable hour. During those moments, a frustrated dad vowed he’d never sleep out in a tent of any sort ever again. A promise I later broke.

Sometime after 1 a.m., I ordered the boys out of the tent and forced them to run laps around the house. Tongues hanging, they crawled back into the tent and never uttered another word, also being careful to keep their bodily functions to themselves.

After moving to North Carolina, I was hoping my kids had gotten past the whole campout gig. But a child’s mind is a warped object, fully capable of contemplating and plotting methods of adult misery and torture.

The problem with campouts is the virtual certainty that a high percentage of the boys involved will bail out and make their way inside. On one occasion, eight more adventurers began the evening in two tents behind our house. I decided to sit this one out. When I got up to check on things at 2 a.m., there were strange bodies sprawled out indiscriminately on the couches and beds in our home. My youngest child, five at the time, braved it out until morning. Most of the bailers were the older chumps.

I’m with the older chumps. It’s just too much on an aging body to sleep on the hard ground surrounded by plastic curtain drapes. There’s creepy noises and boys always insist on staying up late and breaking wind. I don’t see what the big deal is. How is that fun?

And dads- whether the kids are in or out- must serve as enforcers of noise violations. “If I hear another word, I’m gonna give you a wedgie that’ll bring tears to your eyes!’ Then the friend kids will say something to my children like, “Your dad- the one everyone thinks is cool ‘cause he writes that junk in the paper- well, he’s a jerk.”

Then just when I’m sure they will never ever make it through a night outside- it happens. Nobody comes inside. And I realize not only am I getting older, my kids are, too. And for whatever reason, a part of me is sad. Not the part of me that has in the past been forced to sleep on the ground, but the part of me that wishes my kids could always remain kids.