–Continuing on the Boy Scout Campout thread begun at Outsider Mom Goes on Boy Scout Campout

Friday night, around 8:30 p.m.

The drive up here was not a bad one, though much of the first half consisted of the kids trying to find songs they wanted to listen to on my LG “Chocolat” cell-phone-mp3 player, an apparatus that my husband bought last Christmas in response to a pitch from a fast-talking salesman in a booth set up at Best Buy. The scouts quickly discover that our musical tastes are not similar, and that I have only one “rap” song, “Where is the Love?” on my music catalogue, and it’s not real rap, it’s “soft-core.”

We stop at Whataburger in Decatur, where I am told that the scouts sit together and so do the adults, so I sit down with Ms. B and Mr. R, two scoutmasters. They are apparently old friends, having been in Troop leadership together for five years, and each having sons in the oldest rank of scout, the last two-years-of-high-school variety.

It’s worth noting that the scout numbers are highest in the lowest ranks, where Brand is currently serving, and by the time you reach the older ages, there are only one or two guys. The disappearance of Vince, who’s a medium-aged scout, has been duly noted and there is some anxiety, on my part, at least, whether he will ever return.

Mr. R tries to start up conversation by asking why Dean and I decided to have 6 kids. I am caught flat footed. “Suicidal insanity?” I try. Then I try to explain a whole host of factors, which include California public schools, home schooling, world travel, Catholicism, and just really liking babies … and come out thinking “it would have been better to have kept your mouth shut and let them think you’re crazy, instead of trying to explain yourself and removing all doubt.”

Nevertheless, they take me to Starbucks with them, putting the three of us in a group of people who can drink coffee close to bedtime and still get to sleep. Whether this is because we’ve drunk so much over the last 20 years that it no longer effects us, or because we’re so exhausted in general that we could steep 15 minutes later even after taking a hit of speed, I don’t know.  I get back in the Suburban and now another scout, Ryan takes his turn riding shotgun in the front, letting Brand sit in the back.

Ryan and I have a good conversation, including such topics as his old scout troop in Weatherford, and after a while he steers the conversation to dead people and what happens after they put them in the box. Do rats run around among your bones?

“No, that’s why they bury you, you know, to keep that from happening.”

“But, can you like ever get unburied?”

“Uh … sometimes if they don’t do it right and there’s a flood and the coffin is unearthed. But generally no. Just don’t be buried in the region of New Orleans, or any other flood plain, you should be okay.”

This seems to comfort him.