latrine When I was about ten years old, I went to a wilderness camp with my girl scout troop. Until then I was content with earning merit badges, singing hokey songs at after-school meetings and selling overpriced cookies once a year to my Thin Mint junkie friends and family.

As with everything else I did at that time in my life, I went with the crowd. Camping is not something I would have chosen to do for fun. Even then I knew I liked my creature comforts. Or rather, comforts without the creatures. I don’t need to get close to things in nature that have a thirst for blood, too many legs and a desire to get all up in my face.

I was OK when we all arrived at the camp site and got checked into the main building, which was nice and clean and looking every bit like the civilization I’d just left.

But as we made our way toward the cabins to drop off our backpacks and stuff, things got more and more rustic, and less and less civilized.

On approach to the cabins, wait. What? We’re cooking on a campfire? Sitting on logs? Eating? Here? My mind was spinning. And the cabins? Where are the lights? Those mattresses are funky. Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I have to pee in a hole in a shed?

I began plotting right then and there how to get back home where a warm bed would be missing me.

That day’s activities included ice-breaker games, gathering sticks for firewood, acquainting ourselves with the layout of camp, singing songs around a fire and then eating off dented metal plates on logs.

What I wanted was to be home watching Soul Train. What I got was dirty and gross and sweaty and can’t I eat in that nice clean building where we started?

That whole day all I could think about was having to sleep in the pitch black cabin. No lights. Cracks in the wooden ceiling. Creaky doors. The one thing I forgot to think about was how much water I drank during the day.

I shouldn’t have had anything because I realized I’d have to use the latrine, which is such a pretty-sounding word, right? [from French, from Latin latrina, shortened form of lavatrina bath, from lavare to wash]. Please. It’s a hole.

Just as we got settled into our cabins for the night, the rains came.

And then I had to pee.

I took a buddy with me, through now-sloppy grounds, up an incline to the ramshackle, bug-infested shed with a hole in it. The smell. The darkness. The fear. I positioned myself for the Infection Avoidance Crouch-and-Hover over the hole and OMG! Is there something touching me? What was that? Is it a rat?

That’s it. I’m outta here.

This is the part where my parents, who read my blog, will find out the Big Lie of 1975.

I feigned sickness.

While heading over to the scout leader’s cabin, I tried to work up a good puke, or at the very least, appear as pathetic and pasty white as possible. It’s very hard to puke at will, so all I could muster was a whiney “I don’t feeeeeel so good.”

The wheels were set in motion and a call would be made to my parents early the next morning.

I’d be free in T-minus twelve hours.

I didn’t care that my fellow scouts would probably talk about me after I left. What a weenie she is. Yeah, can’t even make it one day. I didn’t care that I truncated what should have been a neat experience. For most people.

I’m not most people. As a girl scout you’re supposed to learn “skills for success in the real world” and know your potential. I did. I learned that I’d always be a room service, crisp bed sheet, luxury hotel kind of girl.

The real world is full of luxury hotels.

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