It was a Friday afternoon in April. Our local homeschool co-op group had planned to take a field trip to Rock Bridge State Park for two purposes: orienteering and caving. One dad arranged the caving aspect, and Nate, being a very experienced orienteering person, volunteered to take care of that aspect.
Being too independent to line up a park ranger to teach something that he already knew how to do, he decided he'd take our three homescooled youngsters a little early and just try out a path from "A" to "B" and see how it worked, before he took 20+ homeschoolers on the route.
An hour and a half and four miles later...he was eating humble pie. Somehow the orienteering expert got disoriented. He never took the other kids out orienteering, because by the time he finally found his way back to where they had been waiting for an hour, it was time to go explore the cave.
Mind you, this is a man who NEVER gets lost. I, on the other hand, make a right turn, and moments later don't really know if I actually turned right or left, and of course I don't have a clue if I'm driving N,S,E or W. But Nate? He can take a back road one direction - veer onto several other back roads here and there as he comes to them - and end up exactly where he wanted to go, even if he's never been on any of those roads before.
Anyway, when he returned later that afternoon with three very dirty and tired children, I had to open my mouth and ask, "So, how'd the orienteering go?"
As if on cue, all three children exclaimed "We got lost!" and Nate said, "It didn't go."
I just laughed (oops) and then tried not to laugh, and then laughed even louder. All evening long I continued to get an occasional "giggle" over the situation. And when daughter Jessie went surveying with him a few days later, and came in the house that night exclaiming, "I got lost today!" I couldn't help myself. I had to say it:
"Well, I guess your dad taught you well."
No comments:
Post a Comment