My Wasted Youth (as a Camp Fire Girl)

I’ve managed to make it through most of my life without mastering a few basic life skills.  I’m not proud of that, but at the same time, I’ve survived to this point without them, so I’m not overly concerned.

The biggest of these skills is cooking.  It’s not that I can’t cook a few dishes. I can. It’s just that everything I make turns out so wretchedly bad that whenever I announce, “dinner is served” to my family, they either feign illness or outright refuse to eat. If my sons ever announced they were going on a hunger strike, I wouldn’t worry too much. They’ve done it before and survived.

Now I don’t want you to think I’m completely incompetent. There are a few things necessary in modern life that I can do.

For example, I can sew a button on a shirt.  I can also iron a shirt, although I prefer ironing pants because the creases I create when ironing usually look better on pants than on shirts. I can clean the bathroom, even though it requires overcoming a fear of improperly mixing chemicals and poisoning myself. I can make a bed (but not without it looking like someone took a nap on the covers). I can pull weeds, but that’s about the extent of my gardening skills. Every plant I’ve ever tried to care for ends up looking dead—even the artificial ones.

So why does this suddenly matter to me? Well, it’s January, and February is around the corner. Where I live in Texas, these months can be brutal for the Life Skills Challenged. That’s because if it snows here, even a trace, everything shuts down. We can’t drive anywhere, and walking is impossible. That’s not even the worst part. Sometimes we lose power and go freezing in the dark for days.

A couple of years ago, we had a snow and ice storm that shut down the city. My family was lucky because our power stayed on the entire time, but my friends who lost power were building fires for warmth and melting snow to flush toilets. And the absolute worst part?

They couldn’t shower. 

Ugh.

I was fortunate. The lights stayed on, and one of my friends came over and helped me shovel the driveway in exchange for a shower. Now let me be clear—I’m not a terrible person. I would have let her take a shower without the snow shoveling, but she insisted (or at least that’s how I remember it).

Last year, I wasn’t so blessed. Our power went out. It was cold and dark and boring. It got so bad that at one point, I thought I’d just go to bed to escape my lot in life. Heading for my bedroom, I pointed my flashlight at my watch and realized it was only 7pm.

What was worse is that I had no way to get much warmer or feed myself. Our fireplace is very pretty, but it’s gas-powered and behind glass (i.e., useless for anything other than a quiet evening reading a book with a glass of wine). That’s all well and good in ordinary life, but when basic survival is at stake, it might as well be a picture of a fireplace drawn by one of the kids.

Some of my friends have camp stoves and know how to cook on them. As mentioned, I can’t cook anyway, but having to drag out camping equipment is an added obstacle. In my world, a microwave oven is an essential cooking tool. Without it, I’m pretty much doomed for any crisis lasting more than a couple of days. You can only survive on peanut butter and crackers for so long.

When I was a child, I was a member of an organization called Camp Fire Girls. I would have preferred being a Girl Scout, but that didn’t exist at my school. What a shame. Maybe if they had that available, I would have taken it all more seriously. I’m a serious entrepreneur and highly competitive, so cookie sales are right up my alley.

Anyway, as Camp Fire girls we learned all kinds of useful life skills, particularly if they involved surviving vis-à-vis an actual campfire. I didn’t learn a thing. Nothing.

Do I regret this life choice? Yes, when I’m freezing my butt off in the dark, I regret it very much.

Oh well, I can’t look back. I can only move forward. First thing in the morning, I’m buying a generator and a decade’s supply of those freeze-dried meals that last twenty-five years. 

As long as my credit card still works, I will survive, but let this be a lesson to you, kind reader:

I’m truly a cautionary tale.