Camping With Women

The women I camped with on my first Scout campout set the bar very high for me, (If No One Else Volunteers, April 29, 2009). Unfortunately some of the women I met and camped with through the years were quite another story. This is the story of Glenda.

The Test: Glenda.

After volunteering to be my friend’s assistant Webelos (4th and 5th grade Cub Scouts) leader, we learned that one of us had to attend Outdoor Webelos Leader training, or OWL, in order for our den to go camping. I readily volunteered after my very positive introduction to Scout campouts the previous April. I signed up, paid up, and packed up according to instructions and set out alone, in Friday afternoon rush hour traffic, for Leonard Scout Camp.

Leonard, as it was called for short, was a beautiful campground located approximately twenty-six miles southwest of Fort Worth near Granbury, Texas. I arrived early and watched and listened as the trainers and the other trainees trickled in. We weren’t allowed to set up our tents until everyone had arrived and played a meet and greet game. Some of the men and women came with friends, chattering and laughing together, and most everyone seemed genial and enthusiastic. And then she arrived.

Her name was Glenda, but when she said it, it sounded like Gleeinda. She had no front teeth, and instead of a leader’s uniform shirt, as we were required to wear, she wore a dirty tee-shirt. She spoke at one volume—loud—and like fingernails on a chalkboard. During the course of the evening campfire, she hooted and hollered, took other people’s food, and even grabbed another campers cell phone, demanding “Gimme that! I gotta make me a call.” I said a silent prayer of thanks to my Maker for the good life I was living, and to American Airlines for group dental insurance.

I didn’t sign up for this.

In order that we might experience camping from a Cub Scout’s perspective, we trainees were the “boys” and the trainers were the “adults” that weekend. We were divided into groups, each representing a den unit. Glenda and I, along with four men, were assigned to the same “den.” We all went about the business of setting up our own tents and helping one another with theirs. Glenda struggled with her gear and the men in our group went to her aid. I retired into my tent and got ready to call it a night. Then came the words that chilled my blood: “Y’all, I think I done forgot ma teeint poles,” she announced loudly. For the uninitiated, “tent” poles are the frame on which you erect your tent.

I prayed fervently: “Oh no, God! Please, oh no!” Then came my answer. “Donner. . . how many people can y’all fit in that teeint o’ yers?” I heard in the dark. The question was, of course, rhetorical because my tent was huge, and the woman couldn’t bunk with the men in our group. “The instructions say four, but it’s really only two,” I offered lamely, trying to stall for time and hoping for a miracle—like tent poles falling out of the sky. I knew I couldn’t turn her down because we were supposed to behave like good Scouts, as in: “Do a good turn daily.” I had no choice but to invite her in like a vampire.

“Ahm gonna need ta bunk with y’all,” came the voice from the dark side.

“Come on in,” I whimpered. Once inside, she talked and talked until after midnight when, exhausted, I asked her to please let me get some sleep. Rebuffed, she finally stopped chattering. Wallowing in self-pity, I imagined Glenda to be a mole, planted by the trainers to see if we could be good Scouts, i.e. good leaders. I prayed again, “Lord, if this is a test, please help me pass it.”

She ain’t heavy. . . she’s my den mother.

The next day we moved from station to station, learning camping and leadership skills from the various trainers. Glenda continued to irritate us by palming off her gear on the rest of us to carry for her and helping herself to other campers’ food and belongings. By nightfall, I felt relatively certain I knew how she’d lost her teeth. Thankfully, OWL training was over at the end of that day, and I drove back to Grapevine, relieved it was behind me. I walked into my home, tired, dusty, and thirsty.

“Well, how’d it go?” Jim and Robert wanted to know. I answered with all the energy I had remaining: “Red wine, please.”

Next: Miss Congeniality

Donna