The last week of summer, I took the boys and went down to Lion Country Safari to go camping. We were only gone three days, but I thought it would be a great final trip before school.

The first evening of the trip, as we were staggering exhausted back to our tent, it occurred to me that we were all pretty grimy.

“You know,” I said to the boys, “we really should get some showers.”

“Aww…”

I covered a yawn. “It’s that or stay grungy.”  The sun had set and the rain had stopped, but the air was hot and humid. We were walking in a cloud of sweat and bug spray, and both boys had streaks of mud on their faces. I chuckled. “Camp grungy.”

“Yeah,” my youngest shouted. “Let’s stay camp grungy!”

I suppose I should have pulled the Dad-card and made us shower. Instead, I tried to change their minds. “Camp grungy is really grungy,” I said. “Bug spray, sweat, mud… not to mention never brushing our teeth. We’re going to be so smelly, people will cross the street just to get away from us.”

My youngest laughed. “Yeah!”

His older brother smiled and looked at me appraisingly. I’m not sure, but I think he saw I was in trouble and was watching to see what I did.

“We won’t be able to get in our sleeping bags,” I said. “We’ll be too dirty.”

“It’s too hot for that, anyway,” the little guy said.

“No pajamas, either. They’d get dirty.”

“That’s okay, we can sleep in our clothes.”

“Yeah,” my oldest chimed in. “That way we’ll have less laundry to do when we get back.”

My youngest giggled. “Just one set of clothes each!”

And so the argument was lost. Camp grunge wasn’t as bad as you might think, though I did insist on changing socks each morning.