Back during my undergraduate program, I belonged to a campus volunteer organization whose sole purpose was to organize and document volunteer activities across the campus. (The last two years we logged in 35,000 my junior year and 50,000 hours my senior year.) Each year we took a leadership retreat. This particular year we decided to take our retreat at a very large cabin in the Smoky Mountains.
You have to picture this cabin...it was at the very top of the mountain...up past the ski resort. The views were incredible. The "cabin" was more like a small mansion. There were 25 of us on this retreat, and there was a bed for each of us somewhere in this place. It was awesome and we loved every minute of it.
On this trip, on the bottom floor there were two bedrooms. Each room had two set of bunk beds in them. So there were 6 or 7 of us sleeping down there. I don't know what was going on, but none of us were asleep on the bottom floor. We were just having too much fun harassing each other. At some point a little voice called out for one of my roommates. "Dwaaaaaaaaaaaayne." The little voice whispered again. "Dwaaaaaaaaaaayne." Consequently, Dwayne was a bit freaked out, but the rest of us were too busy rolling around in laughter.
We all finally congregated in the common room on our floor. We just kept on giggling and laughing. For some reason, we were all ridiculously giddy. Probably a lack of sleep. Who knows.
Moving on...we decided that we wanted to find our friend "Lucy." (Name changed to protect the embarrassed.) Well, we knew that Lucy was on the third floor. We were in the basement. So we had to get to the third floor without waking anyone else in the house. You have to imagine 6 of us in our early 20s trying to get through the house quietly...not a good possibility.
We decide to make it a stealth effort. Here we are, all 6 of us, crawling on the floor whispering "Lucy" trying to find her. We make it to the second floor, snickering the entire time, and still on the floor. We make our way into the living room area and as we pass one of the couches, our advisor sits straight up and says "WHAT ARE YOU ALL UP TO?" We jumped sky high, and there may have been a few shreeks. Of course the laughing ensued. Our advisor's response when told what we were doing was her shaking her head and just saying "up to no good." What did she expect. We were the ring leaders in everything that happened in our organization, good or evil!
We continued our ascent to the third floor. We finally make it to the room where Lucy is sleeping. The only problem was that we had no idea which bed she was sleeping in. Some brain surgeon decided that someone would quickly turn on and off a flashlight while the rest of us looked for Lucy. Could she be found. Obviously we were stupid to think that would work, not taking into account that our eyes would need to adjust. They never did. The light would come on...the light would go off. We are sitting there totally baffled and cracking up at how stupid this has all gotten. Of course, we are still roaming through the room whispering "Luuuuuuuuuucy. Luuuuuuuuuuuuucy."
We end up waking the entire room, and utter chaos ensues. PILLOW FIGHT!
Through our stealth mission, we managed to wake up more than half the house. Did we really care? NOPE! We were having too much fun.
That weekend retreat was the best time I remember during college. The people this volunteer organization were then, and remain to this day, some of my best friends. We were a close-knit group that were more like a family than a bunch of friends.
I miss those days when everything was simpler. At some point we are supposed to grow up. I didn't say we have grown up. I simply said we were SUPPOSED to grow up.
Consequently, each winter a group of my friends get together in a cabin in the Smoky Mountains for a fun weekend. What do we always do in Friday night...HIDE-N-SEEK. Imagine a group of adults (huh, right) in their late 20s to early 30s playing HIDE-N-SEEK throughout the entire house. Some of the best hiding places of all time are
1. Under the stair landing in the basement.
2. Up in the rafters.
3. On the fireplace mantle.
4. In the hot tub...with the cover still on top of it. (My personal favorite. Hey, at least it was warm.)
Life is good when you act like a big kid.
Thanks for listening to my walk down memory lane. I am sitting here just smiling at the memories.
Until next time.
- JC
Delightful!
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