CONTENT WARNING: Crass Humor

I was one of several volunteers running an event for a group of kids from a very deprived area. We’d taken them camping for three weeks in a different country. This was all a Big Deal. Most of them had never been abroad before; heck, most of them had never been away from home before.

The little sods were constantly ragging on each other. “Your Mum” jokes were having a bit of a moment in school playgrounds at the time, and it was their favourite way to wind each other up. We had several kids with us whose mothers had died or left — mostly left. They were getting really upset because the others were just hammering them with “Your Mum” jokes.

So, we banned the jokes.

One night, with the kids in bed and (supposedly) asleep in their tents, a couple of the volunteers did a well-being and security sweep round the campsite… and returned to the central building (where the other adults were preparing the next day’s activities and clearing up) with two little ones in tow.

It seems that, instead of sleeping the sleep of the just, they’d been trading “Your Mum” jokes — and they seemed stunned to discover that tent walls are not soundproof. Who knew?

Anyway, the two volunteers basically called all our attention to the matter and told the kids to repeat what they’d been saying to each other. The idea was we’d all consider their transgression, set a firm face against it, and agree on a “punishment”.

I cannot remember what the first “joke” was; I know it was pretty weak. The second one had pretty much all of us suddenly suffering “coughing” fits.

“Your mum’s t*ts are so square, the milk comes out in cartons.”

In October of 1995, I went on a mid-week overnight trip with my Girl Scout troop, in the greater Seattle area. We were all giddy about getting to skip school for a couple of days and spend time with our friends. 

After dinner, the camp counselors and a few other people gave us all a talk about the rules for the couple of days we’d be there. We were all around the ages of ten to fourteen, and we were getting antsy, but we tried to listen. The last talk was from a man whose job it was to clean the Port-a-Potties. In his few minutes of talking, he went into a strange amount of detail about his job, probably to encourage us to not make any extra mess. 

We understood the importance of his job, certainly, and we were glad someone was there to do the literal dirty work. The man was pleased that we took him seriously.

As he reached the end of his talk, all of us Scouts broke out in cheers.

Man: *Blushing* “I’m glad to hear that I’m appreciated!”

Then, another staff member behind him coughed. The man turned to see the real reason for cheering.

The other staff member had turned on an overhead projector and written the final score of the tie-breaker game between the Seattle Mariners and the Los Angeles Angels. The Mariners had won nine to one, securing the team’s first-ever trip to Major League Baseball’s post-season. As much as we appreciated having toilet facilities to use, baseball was more exciting!

My dad used to do a lot of reenacting. At one battle, a group decided to hike to some historic site “not far” from their campsite. They had to walk through a long train tunnel to get to their goal. There was a human-sized passage beside the tunnel, but it was very muddy. Everyone except Dad decided to walk along the tracks since that was a dry path, and they’d only seen one train come through in two days. They felt safe to walk into the tunnel with no side space to jump to safety.

Dad walked faster than the others, so he exited the human tunnel when the rest of the group was still in the train tunnel. He could see the guys in the dark, within fifty yards or so of the exit.

Suddenly, a train whistle came from deep inside the tunnel behind ’em.

Those out-of-shape middle-aged men set some sprint records getting out of that tunnel before the train came barrelling through. They laughed off the close call, went to see the historic site, and headed back.

Half of the guys decided to follow Dad through the muddy human tunnel. The other half were convinced that there was no way another train would come along so soon after the first, so they headed into the train tunnel. They’d not gotten far when they heard a train whistle. Everyone ended up following Dad through the muddy human tunnel after that second train came barrelling down the tracks.

I’ve always wondered if those dumba**es gave the train workers heart attacks as they saw a group of idiots on the tracks ahead of ’em.

This story happened about a dozen years ago, not long before my dad passed away. That summer, my wife and I decided to go camping at a place right on the Welsh coast with some friends. The site is a stone’s throw from the beach right behind the sand dunes. My wife had been before in the summer and the weather had been lovely, so we were hoping for the same again. My dad said that he could come over from my hometown with his dog (my wife and I live in another city) and join us for the second day and night and maybe get a bit of sea fishing in, too, so I brought my spare tent for him and the dog to stay in.

The first night’s camping was okay, but on the second day, the weather started to get progressively worse. A storm was coming in off the Irish Sea, and we were only about fifty metres or so from the beach. Everyone decided to cut the trip short and go home, and my dad offered to take some of our gear with him in his car to help out. I loaded his car up, and he set off while I started to pack up the main tent. It was then that I realised that I couldn’t find my car keys and that they must have fallen out of my pocket into his car. It didn’t help that access to the campsite was across a causeway that was closed during certain times of the day due to the tide, so we only had a limited window to leave the place.

My dad had only been gone for about half an hour, so he could easily turn around and get back to us, but when I rang his phone, it went straight to voicemail. After ringing him a couple more times, I realised that he must have left his phone switched off! It was more than three hours to drive from the campsite back to his house, so if he didn’t check his phone before he got home, then there was no way he could turn around and come back that night.

My wife continued to try and call him while I packed up in what were now very wet and windy conditions, and we also called my mum to let her know what had happened. If my dad happened to call home during the journey, and it was not too late, at least she could tell him to turn around. 

We told our friends to get home themselves and that we would tough it out if need be. We packed up as much as we could, pegged the tent down as much as we could, and prepared to sleep in it.

After about three hours, we got the call from my dad asking what the problem was. He found the key right away in the passenger footwell and said he would come back first thing in the morning.

That night, the storm got worse, and it was so bad that the tent got damaged. My wife and I moved into the car instead for safety, and looking around the site, we could tell that we were not the only ones sheltering in cars or vans. As you can imagine, we didn’t get much sleep, and the next morning, we salvaged our tent, packed it into the car, and waited for my dad to arrive. He must have set off at first light, because he was there quite early, with a sheepish look on his face. 

Me: “Why on Earth didn’t you have your phone switched on?”

Dad: “Because I didn’t want to waste the battery. And besides, it’s only for emergencies.”

Me: “But Dad, your phone has enough battery to last several days, and you have a charging cable in the car. And this was an emergency!”

I then let him in on the big surprise we had planned on sharing with him that weekend: he was going to have the brand new job title of “Grandad”. After quite some time of trying, we had just found out that we were finally expecting our first child, his first grandchild. This is why we didn’t want to be stuck on a Welsh beach during a major storm, just because he didn’t have his phone switched on!

My husband and I used to camp a lot before we had our little one. Once she was old enough, we resumed, splitting the “kiddy” supplies between our backpacks and never going that far, since one of us had to carry her on the back, plus the pack under her “chair” most of the way.

As she got older, we went for longer camping nights and longer hikes. Our oldest wasn’t really exposed to the outdoors as much when she was younger, so the slower “easing into” camping/hiking was good for her, as well.

We made the mistake of camping with a work buddy of my husband’s. Prepared they were not. Well, let me rephrase that: the husband was prepared, but apparently, he had told his wife she needed to be more prepared and she’d shrugged it off, saying:

Buddy’s Wife: “Their five-year-old can do it, so can I. How hard can things be?”

She did not bring the proper weather gear with her, didn’t want to wear the ugly hiking boots (her sneakers were “just fine”), and complained most of the day because she was too tired to go further. Most days we left her at the campsite, which made her even more upset.

Me: “Feel free to leave if you’re having such a bad time.”

Buddy’s Wife: “No, the hike back to the car is too far!”

It turned out to be an eye-opening weekend for the husband, though, because they separated shortly after that. He said her attitude toward everything — plus the attitude she had toward our kids when talking to him in their tent alone — was enough for him to see their future was not going to work.