Fishing in a Foul Pond

 

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For more than twenty years, I was a cub scout leader.  I started volunteering for a cub scout pack when we lived in Houston and continued being a Webelos leader when we moved to where we currently live in Louisiana.  It is interesting to run into my former scouts in town and see how they've grown up and see what they've done with their lives.  

Each week we'd meet and work through their books, learning skills and earning badges to commemorate their achievements.  So many fun activities and learning skills that stay with you throughout life like citizenship, scientist, forestry, fitness, cooking, camping, hiking and outdoor achievements.  We'd build our derby cars and race them in the Pinewood Derby.  Same thing with our sailboats that we would race in the Raingutter Regatta.  The Fire-building Race was always fun.  It involved stretching a nylon string across two sticks.  Each team would race to build a fire.  The first team to burn through the string would win.

One of the highlights of the year was summer camp.  Our camp was called Camp Edgewood in Gillis, Louisiana.  What fun we'd have at that camp!  Archery, B-b gun shooting, canoeing, fishing, swimming, hiking.  Running obstacle courses, building and firing off rockets, orienteering.  It was so much fun for the boys!  There was a campfire where boys would put together skits and sing songs.  We'd go back to our campsite and cook over a campfire.  Food somehow tastes better cooked over a campfire.

I passed in front of the camp the other day and saw the Camp Edgewood sign.  I began to reminisce about all of the good times and memories made when my boys were young and we'd venture out to the camp.  There were even "Mom & Me" camps that involved Tricia camping with the boys.  I smiled as I thought of the things my guys learned and joy we all experienced at camp many years ago.

Then I remembered a memory that wasn't so joyous and happy - for me, anyway.  On this particular night, Benjamin and I were camping.  He had won 1st place overall in the bb gun competition that day.  The pride on his face made my heart happy.  We attended the campfire and sang loudly.  I remember they lit the fire in creative fashion that night by sending burning embers in a bucket down a long rope on a pulley.  It struck the base of the campfire and erupted in flame and the boys went wild!

Over the course of the night I developed a headache.  It was a really bad one.  I strained so hard to get better, but late in the night, Benjamin and I packed up our belongings and headed for the parking lot.  I had to get home and get some medication.  These headaches I would get would be debilitating.  My eyes hurt.  Lights and sounds would aggravate the issue.

A little context for this story is needed before finishing: When I was in college doing stupid things, I fell off of a friend's shoulders on an asphalt road, splitting my upper lip wide open.  It required a trip to the ER for many stitches to try to put my face back together.  Unbeknownst to me, it damaged my front tooth.  In later years, my front tooth had root damage from those college shenanigans and had to be pulled.  So that I wouldn't look odder than I already look, I wore a retainer that had a tooth in the front that closed up the gap left by the missing tooth.  I could pop the retainer in and out to clean it.  You'd never know I was missing a tooth.

Back to the story.  Many times the headaches would get so bad, they would make me nauseous.  I would throw up uncontrollably due to the pain.  On this particular evening, walking back to the Explorer, apologizing to Benjamin for ruining the campout with my headache, I began feeling like I was getting sick.  Fortunately, (or unfortunately) there was a bathroom right near the parking lot.  I could see the lights from the latrine beckoning me like the sirens from Homer's Odyssey.  I should've just thrown up by a pine tree, but hindsight is 20/20.

I rushed into the bathroom, ran into the first stall and violently vomited, emptying the contents of my stomach into the toilet with such force and so quickly that I didn't see the toilet.  This toilet was vile.  Someone prior to my visit had diarrhea.  The toilet was plugged.  In addition to the contents of my stomach, the toilet was also filled with someone's foul, fetid, feces.  I was gagging.  My head was spinning.  My nostrils were filled with malodorous mayhem.

I exited the bathroom, stumbling outside gasping for fresh air.  Once I had somewhat gathered my wits, Benjamin and I resumed our trek to the Explorer in the parking lot.  And it was then that I had a cruel realization - my retainer with the front tooth on it was gone!  I rubbed my tongue in the toothless gap in my top teeth.  Apparently, the force of my projectile vomiting had dislodged the retainer and it had gone into the toilet with the rest of my campfire supper.

What to do?  The retainer was the only thing that kept me from looking like a toothless hobo.  I would be embarrassed to go to work or to church missing one of my front teeth!  I did the only thing I could do.  I mustered my strength and forged ahead, reentering the bathroom that smelled of rotting roadkill and death.  The good news, if one could call it that, is that the toilet was stopped up.  My retainer was somewhere in that slurry of sewerage.  My objective was to fish it out.  This was not a job for the faint at heart, and I'll spare you the details of my fishing expedition.  In the end, I was successful!  I found the retainer, raised it in my hand in victory and popped it right back into my mouth.

I did no such thing!  We drove home in silence, horrified at the night's turn of events.  I seem to have blocked most of that night out of my memory.  I don't remember exactly what we did with the retainer, but I did use it again after sterilizing it by boiling it for a long long time, if memory serves.   Speaking of memories, scouting with my boys fills my head with so many great memories.  That evening was one memory I'd like to forget!