la vie en rose

For my 2nd year of camp I went back to Port Orchard again. I honestly don't remember too much about that year. Lenette and I were starting to grow apart (it can get weird when the friend you remember playing American Girl dolls and "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?" on the computer with is suddenly obsessed with boys (not that I wasn't obsessed with boys, too; the romances just were better in my imagination) and she had all her friends from her ward that had bonded from the year before (that camp was divided by ward, not by year). I do remember, however, the (pig-nosed) Patterson girls in my ward were weird and Gothic and they only ate baby food. They threw up when they tried to eat regular food. I was glad I had Lizzy from PO2 with me because we had been in Primary together from the beginning and our birthdays were only a few days apart (many years later I saw her again and she worked at the shipyard and was involved in body-building contests).

Back in Utah, it was the year for stake camp. We were somewhere up in the mountains, I don't remember where. It was dusty and hot and we slept in huge teepees. My mom was a nurse that year (no special training, other than raising 6 kids. Her treatment of choice? Put some butter on it). I had a lot of girls my age in my ward and we had fun at church and activities, so I was pretty excited, plus some of my friends from school that weren't in my ward would be there, too. I was also excited, for I was about to pull off the best prank of my young life that year.

Spoiler alert: if you've never been on a snipe hunt, quit reading, go put some toothpaste on your nose, grab some sticks and a pillowcase, and follow me into the woods.

I had a little chew toy made out of real fur that I brought up to camp. Tiffany from my ward was in on it (she was the funniest girl I knew at the time, so I knew she could be trusted. She once was laughing so hard at an activity that she peed her pants a little, but she laughed that off, too). Lacey had to be in on it because her sister had a vibrating pen that we needed to pull the whole thing off. We gathered up anyone who would come (which was actually quite a few people), had them slather toothpaste on their noses, upper lip, forehead, cheeks, anywhere we could get them to. I grabbed some red paint from the craft area, my furry little friend, a pillowcase, and I was ready. After making people whoop and holler sufficiently enough to embarrass themselves, I yelled out, "We've got one!" Tiffany made a big dramatic gesture with the pillowcase and I shoved the toy inside. Lacey got underneath it with the vibrating pen and turned it on. One by one, we had people come up and pet the snipe through the pillowcase, feeling its fur and how it shook because it was so frightened. Finally I said, "We should probably let it go, we don't want to hurt it." I squirted some red paint on the palm of my hand (actually, in my anticipation, I squeezed the bottle too hard and a LOT of paint came out). Tiffany shook the pillowcase and I stuck my hand up it because the poor little snipe was stuck. I let out a blood-curdling scream and Lacey shined the flashlight on my hand. It was dripping red and I was hysterical (how's that for a dramatic performance?). I kid you not, girls started crying and freaking out. Tiffany and Lacey flanked me and we were dying of laughter, but since it was so dark, it looked like we were just shaking scared. We ran to my mom, told her what happened, and she bandaged up my hand (thanks for playing along!). And that should have been the end of a fabulously staged prank.

Except that some of the girls couldn't sleep. One wouldn't eat. They wanted to go home. They thought that since the snipe had tasted blood, that it would come into their teepee and gnaw on their toes. The stake leaders approached me and demanded that I tell them what I did to make so many girls so petrified. I agreed to give my secret away at the next fireside. Sheepishly I walked to the front of the amphitheater, grabbed the microphone and told everyone that I was sorry, removed the bandage from my hand, and proved there was no bite mark. Good thing that was the last day of camp. I was afraid of retribution.

The snipe now hangs proudly on my beads.