Backyard Campout

     As young boys we liked to campout in the backyard, playing cards, telling stories, some would smoke. The last backyard campout we had caused my parents some concern.  I have to admit my parents were much more strict than some others and this campout was in my parents backyard.  This campout was a Friday night and we were all from Catholic families so eating meat on Friday and certain Holy days was forbidden, a mortal sin that would send you to Hell if you died before you confessed your terrible sin. That was hard to swallow (not the meat) but the punishment of Hell, I didn’t understand how eating meat on Friday and murder received the same religious punishment and the explanation authorities gave didn’t make any sense.  As a family we lived with the no meat rule until the church finally changed it, which was also puzzling because if you ate meat on the Friday before the rule was changed it was a mortal sin but a week later after the rule changed eating meat on Friday was ok, didn’t make any sense to me and questions were never welcome or answered satisfactorily.

     Anyway back to the campout, as we got older playing cards, tell stories and smoking wasn’t enough excitement for some of the guys. So some of the group decided after eating our fill of meat laden sandwiches that going over to the neighbors’ backyard with an above ground pool would be a good idea to cool off but it was 3:00am.  A few us stayed back in the tents because it seemed like the idea had bad news written all over it.  So the swimmers disrobed and headed over to the neighbors for an early morning swim.  How they did not see this ending badly I can’t answer. Young boys are not quiet creatures and the neighbors were awakened abruptly with the splashing water and other noises from their pool and as we suspected our neighbors didn’t much care for the idea.  Especially since none of the swimmers had trunks, Yeah, the neighbors woke up to a bunch of boys in tightey whiteys swimming in their pool, not happy about that.  Once discovered the guys decided they needed to high tail it out of there, but now you had a bunch of half nude boys running around the neighborhood trying to get back to the tents in my parents back yard. 

     So early that morning my parents had a series of questions they ask of me after they cancelled the campout.  They found the meat and ask what heathens were eating meat on Friday, my answer of I don’t know and it was only meat wasn’t satisfactory.  Then ask why some of my friends were swimming in their underwear in the neighbors pool, I answered they had no swimming trunks, also a bad response.  I could barely give a reasonable answer for the things I did, answering questions for the actions of some of my friends was impossible to do, for all I knew it was the meat that poisoned their brains and drove them to commit these crazy acts.  I guess years later once the Catholic Church approved eating meat on Friday all the brain poisoning meat was destroyed.