Memory Monday: The Dignified Way To Moon Someone...

This memory goes all the way back to the summer of 1994.  I was enjoying the last one before my senior year of high school and looking forward to all the activities that came with it.  This meant LDS Girl's Camp.

Many of you are familiar with this concept.  Some are not.  Essentially, it meant that every summer, LDS girls over the age of eleven and under the age of 18 spent a week in the wilderness, camping in tents with or without indoor plumbing, consuming massive amounts of smores and certifying our camping skills.  Certification included basic first aid, how to start a fire and then how to extinguish it when you realize just how flammable tumbleweeds are, and other such pertinent information such as learning how to make a makeshift toilet.  Here's were this particular story begins.

As part of my final year of certification, we were required to go on a hike.  As far as I remember it, the plan was to hike for 3 miles or so (the requirement has since changed and it's now longer) and camp over night in a previously designated clearing.  The leaders decided to fulfill this part of our certification a few weeks before camp to make it easier on us while we were filling leadership roles during the actual girl's camp.  We were instructed to pack LOTS of water and a hobo dinner, a sleeping bag, a blanket and a back pack to carry all of it in. 

That is what I did.  I packed my pack which included an over abundance of water since I had had the mortal fear of dehydration pounded into my brain.  I met the group (which included male chaperones, one of which happened to be my high school history teacher, who was also a leader in our clergy) at the designated area having already consumed at least a few bottles of water.  That was my first mistake.  Not going to the bathroom before we left was my second.

I was revved up to go and positively swimming from the amount of water I had consumed.  No worries since I was going to sweat it off during our quick hike to our destination.   Turns out, there was a misunderstanding.  If I remember correctly, it was revealed that the person in charge of scouting out the trail didn't actually do it and the 'quick' hike we were sure would be over before sundown ended up being much longer.  And up-hill.   And...wait for it...no port-a-potties.  We all made it to the clearing after 9:00 that night starving and desperately needing to use the outhouse....which, we discovered, didn't actually exist.

Luckily for us, someone brought a shovel and a tarp..you know, for privacy.  Luckily, we were certified on how to deal with this situation.  Unlucky for me, I never thought I would ever actually have to go to the bathroom in a hole with only a sheet of plastic separating me from half of my high school friends, local clergy members and one of my teachers.  It was cold and breezy...and everything echoed!

That night as my hobo dinner was sizzling on the campfire I could not remember a time when I had to go to the bathroom more than at that moment.  Starving only a little while before, the whimpers of my neglected appetite were hushed beneath the anguished wails of my bladder.  Yet, my pride would not allow me to do what I needed to do in such a public forum.  It was then and there that I made my decision.  I would wait it out and go when we got back to civilization the next day.

Finally, it was bed time.  The sooner we went to sleep, the sooner we could get home.  That turned out to be one of the loooooonnnnnggggggeeeest nights of my life.  I could have watched the stars as they twinkled but I couldn't.  I could have taken notes on who snored that loudest and used it for blackmail later.  Not so much.  I was afraid to move for fear that my bladder would actually explode.  I couldn't sleep and almost allowed myself a trip to the hole, but just couldn't bring myself to do it.

Hours past.  I started to sweat.  I wanted to throw up.  I wanted to sleep.  I wanted to go home, not to my comfortable bed with it's soft sheets and pillows or cushy couch and throws but to my own bathroom.  That's all I wanted.  The melodramatic tears came.  Oh the misery and whoa!  I remember thinking, "This must be what hell is like."    More tears.  Then came the quiet sobs.  Did anyone ever die from their bladder exploding in the wilderness?  I thought I was about to.  Just how much worst would the humiliation of a wet sleeping bag be in the morning?

After what seemed like an eternity, dawn broke and people began to stir.  I should've just gone before it was light but being delirious, I wasn't thinking clearly.   Breakfast was being prepared, I stood up and gravity intensified my misery.

I couldn't do it any longer.  I had to face the hole.  The disgusting, putrid hole behind the rope and bright blue tarp and stick that cheerfully dispensed the roll of toilet paper.  "Good morning to you" it said.  "Bite me, you toilet paper roll!  You don't know real pain!"  It was then and there I no longer cared about echoes, holes or dignity.  I squatted an unpracticed inexperienced squat, in the wrong direction, did what I needed to do and hastily began my retreat back to the safety of the sleeping bag (that barely made it out unscathed.)  It was then that I realized that I over estimated the bright blue tarp in reference to where I chose to stand.  This all happened as my high school history teacher was awakening and sat up-all the while being at the very rare and unfortunate angle where he could witness a full moon at sunrise.  Normally, this wouldn't have been an issue to anyone else less clumsy, even slightly more graceful and who didn't stick their bum out too far.

 Anyone who knows me, knows my propensity for apologizing.  This was one of those situations where I never could quite find the words.  Until now.

To my history teacher:  Please accept my completely mortified and abject apologies.  Had they a color, they would be a cross between the scarlet of humiliation and the green of nausea.  It was never my intention for your morning to greet you in such a manner; as a victim of another's clumsy indignity.  Please rest assured I never intended the bad karma from rigging the camp's outhouse a couple of years ago with petroleum jelly, saran wrap and twine, to punish you.  I initially thought that going to the bathroom in a bush  to avoid the mess I made, then tripping and falling...down stream, would be payback enough...but it wasn't and now you suffer.  I guess karma was particularly mad about that one.  For what it's worth you have my sincerest and most purple faced apologies




On another note, why I would be okay with bushes and not a hole?  I never, ever claimed to be the wisest or most logical teenager.