Scout Stories

Mile Swim Emergency - June 2014

Every summer my troop goes to a local camp for a week to earn merit badges, swim, shoot guns, and all the other stuff you would assume would be at a Scout Camp.

Included in these activities is an event known as the Mile Swim. Kind of self-explanatory, swimmers swim a mile around the camp's lake. It is a pretty big deal to those involved, who are obligated to train for three days ahead of time during the week. Before they swim they must also find a rower, who rows beside them in a canoe or rowboat to guide them through the course, and a spotter who keeps an eye on them to be sure they are okay.

This year was the first year I participated in it (I ended up doing it two or three years) and it was the only year that I got to do it with one of my favorite dudes in the troop; let's call him Connor. Connor is...... beyond words. He is the kind of character you just meet and immediately like. He has such a laid-back attitude and such an eccentric, electrifying personality that he can find the wildest angles to work, and yet still leads the Troop astoundingly well. A little on the goofy side, he is just a great guy. He is two years older than I am, off at college now, but back then he was a swimmer and very ready to get at the Mile.

Well, the day did not start out his way. As we, the swimmers, waited on the boating dock for our rowers and swimmers, Connor made the precarious choice of doing some deep stretches, including squats, while wearing his Jammer, a tight, knee-length swim suit used in competition.

As he stretched his rower and spotter showed up. To start, his spotter was a Non-Swimmer, which means that he had not passed the mandatory Swim Test and therefore could not go out on the lake without the company of a Swimmer. This already gave the Mile Swim instructor reason to worry, but it was the rower that put the nail in the coffin. The rower made the odd decision to use a rowboat instead of a canoe. This was odd because he had never used a rowboat before.

The instructor had been kind of nervous. "Are you sure you can do this?" I remember him asking.

The rower, let's call him Ben, was very sure. "Oh yeah, I got this, I got this." Normally he was a very competent person, but in this case he didn't quite make the cut. A can't quite remember what happened, other than at one point he asked the instructor,

"Can you show me how to put these paddles in the boat holes?" He of course meant oars in the oarlocks, but that was the last straw.

Fortunately for Connor, this was not a big deal because as this was going on he was doing a series of particularly deep squats. I remember him going almost all the way to the ground, looking at us and saying,

"C'mon lads, this is how you prepare for a swim! You got to get deep and stretch those muscles-" but was cut off by an ear-shaking rrrrippppppp. The moment was just too perfect for words. There was Connor in his Jammer, smiling, telling us about how deeply we needed to stretch when we hear this loud rip. We all immediately know what happened, including Connor, who reaches around to check and his face says it all.

We had to swim after that, but word in the Troop is that he ran the full quarter-mile back to our campsite from the waterfront to change. He did end up finding a good rower and spotter the next day and did the Mile Swim, but was forced to do it in a speedo he had brought. :P