I was and am a big fan of the comedy sketch show kids in the hall. They did a lot of absurd sketches that appealed to my sense of humor. One of my favorites was about a blue collar dock worker that gets counseled about his use of the word "ascertain". Apparently he was using it at least two to three hundred times a day. It is absurd, but that is what made it funny. Anyway, at the conclusion of the sketch, his boss tells him that he is glad they were able to "delineate" the problem. Of course, he then fixated on the word delineate.
For whatever reason, I decided that I would incorporate that word into my lexicon one summer and tried to use delineate as often as possible, with little regard for whether it actually fit into the context. Many times I subsituted the word "delineate" for the word "solve". So, often, when presented with a task, my response was that we would delineate it, and after finishing the task I would declare it delineated. The thing was, no-one, with perhaps the exception of the load called me on it. Maybe they just thought I was mildly retarded or didn't know what the word meant themselves.
When used correctly, it was often purely by coincidence. There are a number of times where the word delineate is appropriate. For whatever reason, a lot of times those types of situations do not present themselves at a boy scout camp.
The other, among many, weird quirks I had was that I had been listening to the song "The Freshman" by the Verve Pipe a lot. It was a pretty popular song, and the chorus featured a line "I can't be held responsible, she was touching her face." I dropped the "she was touching he face" part, but really enjoyed telling people either that "I couldn't be held responsible", or a variation that "they can't be held responsible". This one, I did get called on a few times. For instance, I would often claim that I couldn't be held responsible for things that no one would expect to hold me responsible for. For instance, if there was particularly bad weather and someone made a passing remark about it, my immediate response was to say something like "I can't be held responsible, but we will delineate the issue." Conversely, I would declare that I couldn't be held responsible for things that I absolutely could.
Interestingly, people still continued to talk to me. I think they sort of viewed like an old man entering the early stages of dementia.
However, there was one occasion where it did not fly over too well. I think it was the summer of 1997 or perhaps 1998, but we had a reservation director who was a bit of an odd guy. The reservation director was the top dog, basically everyone answered to one of three camp directors and the camp directors answered to the reservation director. I don't think Ranger Bob answered to anyone, but that was OK because he was Ranger Bob.
Most people sort of worked there way up to the Camp Director job, but not always. Sometimes someone would show up for only one summer and be the Camp Director. We had a few guys who held the reservation director job for several years running, but occasionally there was a gap. And indeed, during this summer there was a gap and there was a guy named Vince who was the reservation director.
Now unlike a couple of my very close friends, Weebs and the Load, I never worked as Summit Director. I will let Load comment on his summer as a camp director, (and perhaps his few weeks of directing a whole other camp) but I think it is a pretty thankless job. Reservation director, I imagine, is even worse. You are responsible for the entire reservation and you have a pretty immature ever changing work force that really wants to have a lot of fun. But, we have had some great reservation directors, the Hammer and T.H. T.H. incidentally was the person that hired me for my very first summer way back in 1992 as a Counselor in Training.
Vince was not a very good reservation director. He had a habit of focusing on minute details and losing the big picture. I wish i could remember this part of the story better, but it is hazy. Anyway, Vince was up at Summit telling us that we had to change the way we did something. It was a stupid suggestion because he really didn't understand the way Summit worked. Anyway, he was very serious. After he finished talking, I of course relied on my old standby and said to him "You can't be held responsible." Everyone who was in on the joke sort of chuckled. Vince was not in on the joke and naturally took my words at face value. He let me know in no uncertain terms that he could and would "be held responsible".
I know this story doesn't have much of a point. Perhaps it was another part of what I really loved about camp. I have never been in a workplace since, and likely very few exist, where it is largely permissible to simply talk in gibberish and non-sequitars.
Also, since this doesn't really warrant a post of its own, I'll throw out this other bizzare tradition that took off at camp. When we were not out on trek, we ate most of our meals in the dining hall at Camp Buckskin. It was nice not to have to cook, but it was very crowded and loud. The standing rule is that staff members were supposed to mix with the various scout troops and one or two staff members would sit with 8 or so scouts. Summit played by a different set of rules though, we almost exclusively formed our own table of all staff members. Then, because of our antics, we were often banished to the porch outside the dining hall. The funny thing was that the porch was by far the nicest place to eat. You were outside, dining alfresco, you didn't have to participate in the bizzare songs and chants that would crop up during the meals. So it was the best kind of banishment.
I think it started innocently enough with someone grabbing a cookie off someone else's tray and eating it. The sort of thing that would get you shanked at prison, but was just a good laugh. But of course it progressed. It got to the point where you would just walk up to someone, grab a hamburger or a piece of pizza off their tray and take a bite and calmly put it back on their tray. The Weebs took it even further. On at least one occasion, he went up to the reservation director, the Hammer, took a bite of I think his french toast and put it back on the tray. Hammer wasn't sitting at our table and noone dared Weebs to do it. He just decided that he would walk up to the Hammer's table, reach down, take a bite, and move on. Hammer, unlike Vince, didn't sweat the small stuff. He didn't say anything. I think he simply cut around the bit where the Weebs had taken a bite and continued with his meal.
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