This is surely one of the highlights of my life! Last week I got to partake in a water fight in Calgary, and had the priviledge to introduce the water weenie to the head of a large youth organization who was visiting from Europe. When he saw me bring it onto the field he was curious. When he saw it in action, he wanted one. Not just to use, but to take home with him. "I have a water fight at camp in Ireland next week, and this will be awesome" he enthused. And so it goes. A new class of weapon, unleashed on an unsuspecting culture. And one that can be pretty much built intuitively on sight. Europe is about to enter a new age. The Water Weenie Age. And I got to initiate it! Yeee haaaw. (Calgary, remember).
I remember the day the water weenie came to Sylvan Acres. I was blessed to be the first to receive one, shortly before lights out on the last night of the Senior Teens weekend at the end of a long summer. My friend Ed handed it to me, and I have to admit that it wasn't very impressive. But then he produced a garden hose, filled it and showed me how far it could shoot. He had obtained an industrial grade surgical tube that had to be three inches thick, and four feet long. I have never been able to find its equal. But he had two of them for me, and two for him. They each wrapped around me three times, and I had to wear a heavy coat to protect them, but I ended up with a pen sticking out of each sleeve, and a 30 foot no-fly-zone around myself. With Ed similarly equipped, we headed out into the woods to hunt.
It was providential, and I believe Ed was a guardian angel straight from God, because that night the Senior Teen boys decided that they had only one raiding goal. To get me wet. Anything they accomplished after that was gravy, but they were not going to sleep until they had hunted me down, held me down, and dumped buckets of water on me. Apparently I was seen to be personally responsible for a great decrease in their after-curfew fraternizing with the Senior Teen girls, and they didn't like me very much. Now, they were ready to exact revenge.
I heard about their plans, of course, and took a more introspective approach to raid watch that night. Ed and I stayed in the trees and tried to pick them off when they split up, but they eventually caught sight of me, and circled in for the kill. The first streams of water freaked them out, because I didn't have a weapon in sight, but the water seemed to come from everywhere. Ed stayed out of sight in the shadows and provided suppressing fire in the confusion. It cut an escape route through them like a knife through butter, and I was off into the trees again. Running away from campers is usually a cardinal sin for a night watch, but I reasoned that while they were chasing me, they weren't technically raiding, since everyone else was asleep and undisturbed, and while they weren't catching me, they weren't succeeding in their mission, which was my ultimate goal on any other given night, so I was really winning by retreating.
The second time they caught me, and got me pinned in a sitting position near the lodge, I immediately started hosing them down with some very impressive water pressure. They were no longer surprised by the soaking, but a 30 foot stream of water that only travels two feet has to be pretty uncomfortable as a direct hit to the chest or anywhere lower, and soon they were all too busy trying to grab my arms to be actually holding me down, and when the water bucket arrived and was thrown, I was able to roll quickly to the side. To this day, I don't believe that any water got on me that didn't bounce first off of one of them after leaving my water weenies so I didn't consider that they had accomplished their goal. Once again I escaped by outrunning them, with my hands on my shoulders shooting water behind me at my pursuers, until they all dropped away.
They lost heart after that, and went to bed frustrated, as they had on most of the other nights at camp that week. Too bad really, but that's the idea of night watch.
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