The Boy spent the week at scout day camp. Every morning it was the same: “I don’t want to go!” Every afternoon, it was the same, too: “Today was so much fun!”

I arrived this afternoon for the normal pickup time only to discover a parking lot. “Oh, there must have been some communication about a final ceremony that I missed,” I thought as I hustled to the interior of the church where the camp was held.

Sure enough, everyone was in the main meeting room — the sanctuary is what it would normally be called, but I think this particular church used “worship center” as its preferred nomenclature — and all the scouts and their parents were there. And of course, someone was handing out awards.

I seized up a little: the Boy doesn’t get awards in situations like this often. At least that’s been my perception. I couldn’t care less, but I think it could.

So when his name was called for second place in his den for the bb gun range, I felt a little bit of relief. Everyone needs the encouragement of public recognition from time to time. Even I like it occasionally, though I find it embarrasses me a bit, as well.

When we got home, the Boy was eager to show K and Papa his certificate and, more importantly, his three days’ targets. Each day showed significant improvement.

“See, the first day I didn’t even hit the target…”

And after dinner, he was eager to take his own bb gun into the backyard for some target practice. We don’t have much in the way of targets: we tend to shoot at leaves on a magnolia tree that has a large oak behind it: that way, if we miss, we just hit the oak. And if we miss the oak, there are only more trees behind that.

Afterward, since we hadn’t gone exploring in a while, we headed out for some exploring.

And lastly, because they’d had a campfire-building contest (“We could only use flint and steel to start the fire, and we could only burn things we’d found around the fire pit,” he’d explained), we made a fire. Partly because the Boy wanted to, partly because, in going through Nana’s and Papa’s papers, we got inspired to do the same, and the upshot of all that is simple: we have a lot of paper to shred or burn, and burning is faster. And more fun, E would insist.