Tuesday Evening
Your correspondent is pleased to report that your Troop 451 Scouts were again recognized for having the cleanest campsite and being the sharpest unit. We have a long tradition of excellence in these things and of being recognized therefore. We should be proud that our Scouts are maintaining this tradition so well.
Earning top honors here means that again Wednesday morning, we will hoist our Troop flag and the Texas Flag over the Cloud L. Cray Flag Plaza in front of the assembled campers and staff.
Today we lunched on 'rib sandwiches' and tater tots. The 'ribs' were a factory-produced item that presumably had pork somewhere in its heritage. In its current flaked-and-formed state, it bore as much resemblance to pork ribs as a slice of bread has to a handful of wheat kernels. But no matter. When one sits down with an appetite from a busy camp morning, it's all good.
After lunch has been consumed, we played another round of "Who's Got Sitting Bull?"
Sitting Bull, in this instance is a tongue depressor that is slipped into the pocket of some hapless soul. Upon discovering one has been thus selected, one hastens to the dais where one must draw an instruction from the "Magic Moon Pie" box. Today's selectee was Don Harrington, who has been associated with Camp Geiger longer than most of us, Scouters included, have been alive.
Once he made his selection, he read it to find that he was charged with the task of "pieing another staffer of (his) choosing in the face." He identified a suitable subject who dutifully proceeded to the dais to collect his just desserts. Really, the pie was just dessert. Everyone cheered as the countdown began but before the second number was chanted, Don had pied his victim in a most thorough manner. More cheers followed.
The victim was then led away to a waiting towel while Don resubmerged into relative obscurity once more.
The highlight of Tuesday's post-dining silliness is the selection of "King Pee Wee." This contest seeks to identify the least massive camper in attendance, who is then designated as King Pee Wee. The King gets a Camp Geiger T-shirt, the right to issue a royal proclamation, and the honor of leading in the processing Scouts to Wednesday night's campfire.
Each troop puts forward its own candidate and they are lined-up in height order. Then, each contestant is weighed and the one weighing the least is the winner. We put forward Dylan Beaver who, as it happened, was considerably larger than a few of the other contestants. It is a silly tradition, all done in the spirit of fun and no one is coerced into participating. Quite the reverse, in fact, with many eager young scouts eagerly vying for the recognition.
We then returned to camp for an evening of "Troop Activities." These consisted of various diversions. Some Scouts played Euchre, others tossed around a Frisbee, and others still worked on their Mic-O-Say costumes. A few turned in early, it seems. Your faithful correspondent spent much of the after dinner hours making signage for the campsite in order to ensure that the next crew of campsite inspectors who comes through will know whose campsite they are inspecting. It is almost relaxing to work by the light of a Coleman lantern - they really are quite bright.
Although it did not cost us first place, today's inspectors docked us for not having a camp gateway. They had entered the campsite from the back way and somehow missed the 8' x 10' gateway a few yards ahead of them! Oh well. In any event, we decided to erect a sign so anyone coming into our campsite from that direction cannot miss whose it is.
The other sign was "Toad Xing," a light-hearted take on this year's Plague of Frogs here in camp. The little critters are really quite endearing and each consumes a considerable portion of its own weight each day in insects. Given the abundance of insects, the toads sound like welcome allies in our quest to reduce our interactions with our hexapodal friends.
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