old.

I am 31. I am also the oldest leader in our church young women's group. That is right - 31 is old. I have never been the oldest at anything. An.y.thing. There has always been someone older who I look to for information. You know, because they have experienced it all before. Older is wiser - always has been for me.

At camp this past week, it was evident that while I was the oldest I definitely was not the wisest.

I haven't camped since I was in high school. (Or, I guess you could count my time in Madagascar as partial camping, but even that was 10 years ago.)

I learned some sound advice:

• As the old leader - I'm also the last that the youth want to ride with. I take this as an honor.


• I learned how to set up a 6 man tent and to take down a 10 man tent. In the past I have only ever used a 2 person tent - so I felt very rich in-deed as the other leaders shared their mansions with me.
  
• Bears exist and even if they don't reveal themselves to you they invade your thoughts. Constantly. But I don't think that bears like spices. We know they like food. Thus the rules of no food in tents and everything locked in the trailer at night (including garbage). But what if spices are left out? I hate to admit this, but we left out spices. Bears did not appear in our camp. Thus I'm of the understanding that bears enjoy mild foods.
  
• The Sego Lily is the state flower of UT


• You can make a mean garlic bread out of hot dog buns.


• Strawberry shortcake is AWESOME with twinkies.


• I can last an entire week without a diet coke. Okay, it was actually only 3 whole days and two half days without - so that would be about 4 days - which in a 7 day week can totally be rounded up to a whole week.


• Modern day camping lanterns are battery powered and can be turned off with the simple flip of a switch!


• The Brown Headed Cowbird is a parasite


• The young women may not know U2, ColdPlay's latest song, or Whitney Houston diddies from the '80s - but the second I broke into All in This Together from High School Musical the world as they know it was blown apart and they couldn't stop talking about it for days. (It must have been the amazing dance moves.)

For an oldie I'd say that was a lot of learning.