Intrepid campers

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

Hunter and I hosted three of his friends for pizza and a backyard campout this weekend. Pretty nerve-racking, I should say. Not the boys. I can handle a bunch of screaming, giggling young men. In fact, I enjoy it. Especially kids this geeky and cool.

No, it’s the parents who make me nervous. I always wonder where I measure up on the parental scale. Do I invite them in when they drop the kid off? Do they want to know where the pizza is coming from? Do I need some kind of document asking about allergies and idiosyncrasies?

I guess it would have been better form if I’d mentioned I already had everyone’s phone numbers in case of emergency, but you know how it goes.

Only a couple casualties in the night. One young man hit his foot on the swing set and limped the rest of the evening. There was no blood, tears or swelling, so I figured it was a minor injury and gave him an icepack. A couple of the other boys got into the vegetable garden, asking if they could have a pepper. I gave them an orange bell pepper, but a couple seconds later, despite my warning, they were into the Thai peppers. A couple seconds after that, they were pouring down the milk. Cracked me up.

When they finally went to bed, they made it about five minutes in the tent before threats of Bigfoot brought one (a boy, not a Bigfoot) into the house. It was another 10 minutes before a passing airplane became an alien became “How do you know your dad’s not an alien?” And then all three boys who were camping out in the tent spent the night on the living room floor.

It’s cool. These are good boys. When I was that age, Phil Burling and I snuck across town in our underwear. Don’t ask—we had our reasons.