Ten Indicators You've Traveled Through Time at Camp

1. You prefer transportation via the spitting llama named Tina than the front of an open trailer pulled by a Chevy Silverado bumper-high in manure.

2. Your newly-minted orienteering skills make the Tang you drank at breakfast seem like it's been riding shotgun in your bladder for twenty years. 293 degrees. 121 steps. And, no, that over-large critter hole is not an outdoor latrine.

3. Your demonstration on force and friction carried you across the zip line like an H.G. Wells traveler on crack. And; while holding the MacGyver-taped tarp between your legs demonstrated wind resistance and dignified grace, the real physics lesson came from the directly proportional relationship between the Cheesecake Factory's Chocolate Mousse slice you ate the previous night and your speed on the zip line. Whee!

4. You encounter a camp counselor dressed as the 1600's French explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle in the forest and you wish three things: (1) that you had not just challenged your Lady Speed Stick to a three mile hike and lost (2) that you did not have aforementioned compass around your neck so you could ask for a very long, very detoured escort back to civilization and (3) that he had not achieved the perfect balance between a French accent and GQ bone structure because it left you stammering like the native tribe women he so eloquently spoke of.

5. Your chicken fried steak at dinner was, without doubt, from 1972.

6. Your camp skit was the same one from fifth grade, minus the mean girl on the end whose hand you dunked in a bucket at midnight for revenge.

7. The silly string you wielded on unsuspecting campers proved string theory: that subatomic particles when united and tense become easily agitated.

8. The wormhole outside your cabin filled with five inches of rainwater was capable of sucking bobby pins, ankles adorned with freshly laundered socks, and your only four quarters for a Coke.

9. The Gramps who spoke about organic gardening left you for a misty moment when he recalled a place you both knew where he met his high school sweetheart, his recently departed wife.

10. You glimpse a future when ten year olds have a better cell phone than you and you realize it's the present.

I hope everyone had a fantastic week. I'll be back on Monday with a Time Traveler's Wife comparison, book versus movie. There's still time to get in on the blog carnival. Email me if you're interested: la-mitchell@la-mitchell.com. Hmm...I wonder what the theme will be.

Two guesses. The first one doesn't count.