Play One on TV

This weekend, my son and I will be camping with approximately 15 Cub Scouts. While gathering the supplies for my backpack, I made sure to grab two 32-ounce Nalgene bottles off the shelf — you can’t have too much water with you on a campout. As I selected my bottles from the “stash”, I noted that I have somehow accumulated six of these Nalgene polyethylene beauties.

This wasn’t always the case. I used to own only two Nalgenes. After all, they’re indestructible, so why would anyone need more? Well, I found out exactly why back in 2003, as I wrote in the following article from my old (and now dearly departed) blog.

———————————

My Nalgene bottle is missing.

This is a really big deal, folks. My vacation starts tomorrow, and I’m taking 13 Cub Scouts off for a week of fun and sun at Camp Kickapoo. Yes, I have an unusual idea of what exactly constitutes a “vacation.”

Let me repeat: my Nalgene bottle is missing. Specifically, both of my Nalgene bottles are missing. This is an incredibly big deal. One simply does not go camping with Boy Scouts and not carry a Nalgene bottle.

For those unwashed masses who do not realize the significance of all things Nalgene, let me take you back to the mid-1940’s, when a small business called the Nalge Company began to build its fortune through the sales of laboratory containers made of polyethylene. Some of the scientists and lab technicians who used Nalge products were outdoorsmen (things were very different in the 1940’s, apparently) and took to sneaking out Nalge bottles for carrying water and mixing drinks.

Aside: I wonder if this practice isn’t the real reason why Japanese R&D whipped our technological butts in the 60’s and 70’s. The cream crop of our scientific think-tanks were drinking out of bottles that previously held God-only-knows what substances emitting God-only-knows how many rads per second. Our entire research pool was suffering from radioactive malachite green poisoning. End of aside.

Things changed in the 1970’s when the company president noticed this illicit black market trade in used urine bottles and formaldehyde jars. He correctly deduced there was a bundle of money to be made, especially if he could find a customer base that didn’t clean fission reactors and mix Kool-Aid with the same containers. Fortunately, the president’s son was a Boy Scout. Being the adventuresome sort, he was only too eager to try out the new concept, along with about a billion of his geeky Scouting friends. The idea took off like wildfire. As a result of this warm reception, Nalge began developing and marketing a series of bottles specifically designed for outdoorsmen, and Nalgene Outdoor, Inc. was born.

I have noticed that, as a general rule, the Boy Scouts of America are a conservative bunch, very slow to accept new innovations or ideas. This is a group whose Computer merit badge manual still makes mention of “computer bulletin-board services like Compuserve and Prodigy.” Suggest to a Scout that something might be done differently and you’ll get a scowl or smirk for your trouble. Unless of course, you’re talking about a new camping gadget. If you ever need to get the attention of a group of Boy Scouts, just show them your new “GPS-Tent Stretcher with Laser Rangefinder” and they’ll follow you around like dogs to a chocolate Milkbone. Adult Scout Leaders are even simpler prey - just describe an ultralight microfiberfill sleeping bag to a Scoutmaster and you’ll have him leaving his wife.

Nalgene bottles are made of the finest artificial substances available to modern science. They just ooze high tech just by sitting there and reflecting sunlight. Naturally, the Boy Scouts grabbed up Nalgene bottles as if polyethylene and Lexan ™ were on the endangered species list. To this day, you can recognize a Boy Scout by his khaki uniform, well-worn backpack, carved-and-branded hiking stick, and shiny plastic Nalgene bottle hanging off the right hip. Not exactly Norman Rockwell, I know.

So you see my dilemma. As a Scout Leader, I am expected to uphold certain values and principles, not only for the boys under my leadership, but for all Americans who want to know that everything is good and right with the Scouting movement. I have the official Scout belt, the official Scout bush hat, official shorts, official socks, and the official Scout pocketknife, complete with the utterly useless official bottle opener. However, without a Nalgene bottle swinging from my belt on the end of an official Scout carabiner, I might as well walk into camp with a Girl Scout merit badge sash across my shoulder and a gay pride sticker on my butt.

I have searched my entire house from top to bottom, including the scary places where I normally won’t go without a flashlight and a can of Raid. While I have found many objects that I had presumed lost (like my Bill Cosby albums) and many other object which I wished would have stayed lost (like my Seals and Crofts albums), I have seen neither shine nor sheen of my Lexan ™ beauties.

I still fondly remember the last time I saw them. It was during last month’s tornado scare. While the storm system was still about 20 minutes away, I grabbed the Nalgenes and filled them with tap water. That’s how I deal with impending meteorological disasters — I fill containers with water. I think this behavior comes from the year I lived in Guam, where a typhoon could come and rip out the water treatment plant without so much as a by-your-leave. Such water-hoarding behavior made sense on an island like Guam, where obtaining access to fresh water would have required the use of a cargo jet. Hoarding water makes less sense to an Oklahoman who only need walk a half-mile to the 7-11 and grab bottles of Aquafina out of the fridge. But habit is habit, so I filled them anyway.

Why the Nalgenes, as opposed to other, larger containers? Because if anything in my house could survive a tornado, it would be those bottles. Legend has it that a truck can run over a Nalgene bottle and the most you would have to do is blow into it to pop the dents back out. Obviously, I wasn’t thinking very straight, for any wind strong enough to give Lexan ™ a run for its money was going to send me to the next county. However, my instinct was to preserve the water, and I was bound and determined to use a container that would survive the next Ice Age.

That was the last time I saw my beloved water bottles. For all I know, they decided I wasn’t spending enough time risking my life on Mount Everest and left to sign up for the next Eco-Challenge.

So I’m sitting here staring at my cheap milk-carton plastic TexSport bottles, remnants of the days when I didn’t know any better and had the money to pay for it. Part of me is laughing at myself, ridiculing this odd sense of loss over something as simple as an indestructible, yet stylish water bottle. The rest of me is trying to figure out how I can use a hacksaw blade and dental floss to break into the sporting goods store before camp starts at 7:00 am.

So off I go to camp, toting my official North Face daypack with gear loops, only it won’t be a Nalgene water bottle dangling from those loops. I’ll be with hundreds of other Cub Scouts and Scout Leaders, each one of them waving their Nalgene water bottles in a pleasing assortment of colors and configurations. People will ask me “Texsport? What kind of bottle is that?” I’ll reply, “Oh, that thing. I’m just holding onto it for a friend. He’s filling my Nalgene bottle.”

If I don’t make any entries tomorrow, it will be because I died of thirst.