Lessons From The River

My boys recently went on a camping trip with some other boys. When I say my boys, I mean my husband and my two sons. When I say some other boys, I mean another father and his sons. They took canoes down a river in Arkansas to a sand bar on which they camped.

It was the perfect boy trip. There were no showers. No girls. Lots of wildlife. Lots of burping. They were in heaven.

The first fun-filled day left the two grown up boys a bit tired, so my husband decided it was time to douse the fire and go to sleep.

"I can put out the fire," one of the boys offered. "I'll just pee on it."
What my husband said to that was, "No, that smells awful. You should only do that if you are about to leave a place immediately afterwards." What four adolescent boys heard was, "You SHOULD TOTALLY do that in the morning right before we leave this camp site!"

The first alarming thing is that my husband seems to be an expert on peeing on fires. A skill I had no knowledge of.

The second alarming thing was what happened that next morning. Since I am a girl, I am not allowed into the confidences of the happenings on the river, but I have it from a good source that these four boys woke up in the morning and reminded each other not to relieve themselves but to save it up for the fire. Then they encouraged each other to drink as much as possible so that the dousing of the fire might be all the more spectacular.

The fathers may or may not have noticed four boys groaning from the pain of full bladders. They may or may not have wondered why these normally restless and active boys sat barely moving, scrunched faces turning all shades of red.

Finally, the magic words were said. "Time to go."

Before either father knew what was happening, four boys stood in a circle around the fire and doused it. The problem these poor boys soon encountered was that it did, indeed, smell horrid. But, their bladders were mighty full, and there was no way to stop what had begun.

"I can't breathe!" one of the boys shouted.
"It's horrible!" another boy declared.
"I can't run away," someone else announced. "I have so much peeing left to do!"
"Me too," they all agreed.

"The river taught me a lesson," one boy summed up the experience. "Sometimes you are stuck smelling your own stink."

Well done, River.