Uncle Roger's Notebooks of Daily Life |
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Thursday, February 09, 2006 The summer before I went into third grade, a family across the street did a house-swap with a family from England. They went to England for the summer and the brits came here, staying in their home. The british family had a son, Danny, who was just my age. We played together everyday, making mudpies, playing with his toy soldiers, generally running around doing kidstuff. Towards the end of their stay, they planned a week-long camping trip. And, they took me along. That was my first taste of camping and the outdoors and I was, quite simply, hooked. My parents were more the opera house type than the tent-and-campfire type. Still, my aunt once invited us to come camping with them -- they had an RV trailer, complete with indoor toilet. Still, my folks only lasted one night before packing us all off to a hotel. That was, unfortunately, the extent of my outdoor experience as a young boy. Fast forward to high school. I was a new freshman with all the possibilities of high school ahead of me. In my homeroom, we were asked to fill out a questionaire listing things we were interested in. I did, and promptly forgot about it. Luckily, they didn't forget about me. Among other things, I got an invitation to join an explorer post. Turned out, it was an outdoor adventure post -- centered around exploring the outdoors through camping, backpacking, rafting, and so on. I was a member of that post for many years and rekindled that repressed love of the outdoors. I went camping, backpacking, river rafting, and rock climbing. I got to do a lot of really cool things with that group, and went on to continue doing them on my own even after I outgrew the post. I learned a lot both about the outdoors and about life in general. All of that, however, wasn't what made filling out that questionaire so important. I met a lot of kids in that group, almost all of whom I've lost contact with since -- except for one. One very important person. A year or two after I joined, another boy named Craig joined. We became friends outside of the post and started hanging out together. We did a lot of camping and backpacking together outside the post, as well as other non-outdoors activities. We ended up living together for about eight years and we've worked together at two different companies (including the one I'm at now). He also introduced me to his kid sister who, it turned out, was a lot like her brother, only in a better looking body. So I married her. So I guess the moral of the story is think about it before you fill out some innocent looking form asking about your hobbies and interests. You may end up with a job, a wife, and a couple of kids. |
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