A new rule.

In a prior life I was a cub leader or if you are in the States reading this, a boy scout leader. I started because my eldest was a little lost and we thought the structure of cubs would do him well. I'm a doer pretty much so when I turned up with my son and the existing leader "Jahula" asked me if I was interested in helping out I said sure. Jahula had no kids of his own in the group but had been left holding the bundle as it were. Baloo was born. I trained for a while then took over by myself and was joined by another Dad "Rama" a year or so after that. I liked doing cubs though it was a lot of work. Spending time with my boy was of course the main driver. Its amazing how many activities we did that he particularly liked! There comes advantages with having your dad as the organiser. Camps was always a favourite. Noosa was the best annual pilgrimage north. We would take canoes and parents and other family and make it bigger than Ben Hur. I designed menus that would guarantee no left overs and word of the success at these camps grew to the point where we had more adults than children. After a busy day with kids, we pack them off to bed so we could have grown up time sitting around the fire sipping on red wine with some soft cheeses and dried figs. Yes alcohol was strictly forbidden by the rule book and yes I didn't give a rats ass because I never drank any so was always 100% sober for any emergency that might arise. No one ever had too much either so things went smoothly and despite the few little turd kids that wouldn't go to sleep when they were supposed to, we were a tight operating unit.
On a quick side note, talking about those turd kids, one night at about 2:30am I was patrolling the dorm trying to weed out the trouble makers keeping every one else up. Liam was one and I caught him red handed. As I was in the process of berating him and asking that he kindly refrain from making loud noises and keeping the other kids awake, one of the mums in her nightie, bleary eyed, emerged from her room to berate me! Apparently I should be keeping the kids quiet so she could sleep! I did consider tasering her then and there but thought better of it. You'd never guess who's mum it was though. Yes, Tamara was Liam's mum and the little shit was behind me so she couldn't see it was him. After she left, I spinned on my heels to look him in the eye. Fear filled his face as he knew what I had just had to swallow and I never heard from him again. Even at 8 years old, Liam could see the signs of a man on the edge.
The next day we loaded into a team of 4x4 for a drive up Rainbow beach and tobogganing down the sand dunes. I think we had 8 or 10 cars in a convoy, loaded to the gunnels with wild eyed kids, most having never driven on a beach before and all ready to test their recently constructed sleds. Its what memories are made of. Along the way at some point a young child collected one of those coconuts you see washed up on the beach. The nut made its way back to camp with us after the long day and was at one point left outside the boys dorm rooms on the second floor of the complex. It was quite an innocuous object. Not too large, not special or drawing any interest from anyone, it was inane and boring to be frank. It was just a coconut. That was until young Lachlan dropped it from the landing to the concrete slab below, just outside the main hall doors and kitchen windows.
As I write this I find my mouth filling with saliva and an intense need to purse my lips and suck my tongue. The memory of what followed is burnt into my olfactory. The nut smashed and the rotting pulp and juice sprayed perfectly in an arc about 3 metres radius. No one was anywhere near it luckily as we were in other areas of the complex doing activities or such like. But as we sat there, and the smell slowly entered our airspace, first subtly then as the concentrations or particles rose, it suddenly became impossible to escape it. I have never ever ever smelt anything as disgusting as that. Even the vet cleaning the anal glands of a dog (you will know that smell if you own a dog) cannot come close to this rotten nut. You tasted it in the air, it got in your throat, kids were crying, adults were panicking, it was a nut of mass destruction. We ventured close to the carcass but the stink was too much. But this thing was just outside the doors to the main area. It had to be cleaned up. I don't think I verbalised the word "FUCK" in front of the 8 year old cubs but I'm sure a caught a few of them uttering it under their breaths. The gaseous onslaught was just to intense to even contemplate correcting their language. Lachlan had long since escaped the scene and was cowering behind a tree. He knew the magnitude of this mushroom cloud. It burnt our eyes and made it difficult to focus. The smell was everywhere and all encompassing. He was retrieved safely but I know several of us wanted to hurt him, hurt him bad, real bad.
Tongs and plastic bags were used and rebagging and rebagging and rebagging but it was only a band aid. The juice had soaked into the surrounding ground. It lingered long and hard as if its life depended on contact with humans. It reminded me of that Denzel movie where the devil could only live outside a human for a minute.
After that day there was a new rule entered into the Justin Book of Rules (its a fluid sort of book, revised regularly but not yet available in print). Mum's get berated too.