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Today I came across a NYT article about Dutch children on summer camp whom are dropped in the middle of the woods at night for fun. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/21/world/europe/netherlands-dropping-children.html I was greatly astonished this isn’t common practice in most other parts of the world. I’m Belgian and as a kid I took part in these droppings on several occasions. Each time I considered the dropping event one of the most exciting things of our summer camp. The first “practice” droppings started when you were 12/13 years old. The leader would walk with the whole group 2-3km away from camp site in the early evening for an “evening activity”. We would play games until it was completely dark and were asked to walk back to the camp in small groups (2-3 people). It always was a pretty simple walk, for example: Walk to the second crossing and go left, when in doubt, walk towards the lights. The leaders intended to make us used to walking in a forest on your own at night and finding your own way. All in all it went ok most of the times. On one occasion our leader decided to put the 3 dumbest kids together and send them back. They thought it would be a better idea to ignore the leaders instructions, take an “alternative” route and walk away from the lights and cross one of the largest military domains of Belgium, which was right next to our camp. They got picked up after they called the camp site from an adult bar on the other side of the domain. During their hour long walk, it never crossed their mind they should stop walking in the direction they were going. Maybe the leader wasn’t telling a joke when he said to go left on the crossing? For some reason it was the last time they’ve put these 3 kids together. From 14/15 year old, the real droppings start. In the middle of the night you are unexpectedly lifted out of your bed. You are strip searched by the leaders and are given a paper with phone number and some small change to be able to call with a public phone (it was the early 90s). You were put in a car blindfolded together with a few of your mates. At least one of your group was someone a bit older (17-18 year old). An hour later you were dropped off in the middle of the woods with a small bottle of water each, the paper with the phone number, some small change and a bit of toilet paper if you were lucky. It usually was a 5 to 6 hour walk to the camp site. It was one of the most exciting experiences during my teens. We agreed with the leaders we would not hitchhike, for good sports. After about 12 hours they would start searching for us. Apart from taking the wrong turn and walking the wrong way for hours, a lot of things happened during these trips: Asking directions on ladies of pleasure or insanely drunk people. Being offered a meal at 4 am by a very nice looking lady in her undies. She had her lights on and we rang her doorbell to ask for directions. We got a lot more then we were hoping for. Once we found a broken, unlocked soft drink machine with a lot of small change in it. A few hours later we raided a bakery with the money we found in the machine. We were sick the next day from overeating. One of the older guys had a mild form of autism. He was in my group and said at one point he had to take a dump. He told us: “I have to take a dump NOW”, dropped his pants in the middle of the road and left a nice pile. The splash from the car which ran over the poo 1 minute later, all gave us a smelly poo shower. A year later they decided to put the autistic older guy together with two of the three guys who took the wrong turn 2 years before. They really wanted to go together. They gave them an easy drop spot. The results were as expected. After 20 hours they were picked up 30+ km away from the camp site. There are a lot more stories to tell. As a kid it took part in 2 practice droppings, 4 big ones and as a leader I organised 4 droppings for the kids. On each occasion the local police was notified and consulted, the parents were aware we would do a dropping. Apart from the lost teams, nothing really bad happened during those 10 years I participated. All experiences I still cherish. MrOzzy fucked around with this message at 14:45 on Jul 22, 2019 |
# ? Jul 22, 2019 14:41 |
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# ? Apr 17, 2024 04:39 |
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...see any Squatch?
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 14:50 |
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This seems cool to me as described and I wish it had been a thing when I was a scout.
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 14:58 |
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Glad to hear they're running a tight ship over there.
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 15:03 |
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The Cubelodyte posted:This seems cool to me as described and I wish it had been a thing when I was a scout. The NYT article reflects the atmosphere and the experience very well, much better then I can write it. I guess that is why Ellen Barry is writing for the NYT and I'm not.
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 15:06 |
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They have real forests in the Netherlands?
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 15:08 |
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"one of the largest military domains of Belgium, which was right next to our camp." It's nice that they set up a little watch tower to make sure the kids were safe.
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 15:21 |
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Heh heh... Droppings.
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 15:22 |
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Randarkman posted:They have real forests in the Netherlands? Kind of, but not really. There are some nature areas/parks but you're never out of earshot of civilization. I live a few miles from the town in question and it's right along side a major highway. E- The scouts hold their big jamboree here each year and rappel down the old church tower. Ralph Crammed In fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Jul 22, 2019 |
# ? Jul 22, 2019 15:29 |
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I thought this thread was gonna be about pooping.
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 15:42 |
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The story of Han One of the older guys of the group I was in, was a pretty interesting dude. Let’s call him Han. You got to imagine him as a chubby, short Asian guy with glasses and a big smile. Han was 2 years older and suffered from mild autism. He was pretty intelligent. You could ask him anything about engineering, electronics, IT, … Once he took apart a broken transistor radio using only his pocket knife. He removed every single part that wasn’t soldered to something. He put it back together and left out about 50% of the parts and modifying a few others. The radio worked fine for the rest of the camp. He had this very loud high pitched laugh and took long breaths in between his AHA’s. This special laugh was a nice combination with his social handicap. Every single joke took him an extra 30s to 60s to understand. This was just enough for everyone to finish laughing. We once went to see a funny movie with Han. After everyone stopped laughing Han went “Oh I get it, AHA! AHA! AHA! …”. So we all started laughing again. My cheeks were getting cramps halfway through the movie. Han was also incredibly naïve. You could ask him anything. Guess who went into the brothel to ask the prostitutes directions? We once went skinny dipping in a private pool during a dropping at 3 am. We ran away when the owner showed up. Han forgot his pants and undies. So we told him to ring the front doorbell and just ask for it. Han got his pants back and we even got directions from the owner. Han also told us he made a movie of his older sister having sex with her boyfriend. He assured us he never looked and only held the camera through the door. His sis would get mad if he wasn’t pointing the camera right. After he told us we were cracking jokes about it for the next few hours. He was also the guy who figured out how to raid the broken soft drink machine. Han once was able to smuggle a small map by putting it in his poo hole. The map was one of whole Europe printed on plasticized card the size of a credit card. Thanks Han, you really helped us to find the way that night! I shared 2 droppings with Han and had a blast each time! Thanks Han!
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 15:46 |
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Chomp8645 posted:"one of the largest military domains of Belgium, which was right next to our camp." Fun fact about the Belgian army: couple years ago they were to down four bullets per soldier and they supposedly had soldiers shout "bang, bang" during exercises.
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 15:47 |
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SLICK GOKU BABY posted:I thought this thread was gonna be about pooping. I'm sorry to disappoint you. Plenty of poo stories though.
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 15:47 |
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uguu posted:Fun fact about the Belgian army: We did have tanks driving through our capitals street yesterday during our national holiday. Eat that Donald!
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 15:50 |
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That tank honest to goodness looks like it's leftover from WW2.
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 16:14 |
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My mother did that to me once. Dumped me in the middle of the Australian bush. Told me someone was coming to pick me up. I waited three hours and then walked home crying. I was 7.
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 16:18 |
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Chomp8645 posted:That tank honest to goodness looks like it's leftover from WW2. It's a Sherman tank. I think everything in that picture is WW2-era vehicles, though unsure about the truck behind the first Sherman.
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 16:18 |
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Chomp8645 posted:That tank honest to goodness looks like it's leftover from WW2. american tanks used to have a white star insignia on them we probably just forgot one somewhere and they kept it. It's fine. e: Randarkman posted:It's a Sherman tank. laffoo
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 16:38 |
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fist4jesus posted:My mother did that to me once. Dumped me in the middle of the Australian bush. Told me someone was coming to pick me up. Al least you knew you could find your way home. Randarkman posted:It's a Sherman tank. I think everything in that picture is WW2-era vehicles, though unsure about the truck behind the first Sherman. It's a WW2 tank, we got a hystoric part during the parade. We got other big tanks, but the US ambassador asked not to publish pictures of the tanks parading (god knows why ). In stead we got pictures of a 17 year old princess. Why are we talking about our army anyway? The tarrain they were lost was just an area where our airforce practices bombing runs. I'm not kidding! Imagine what a 12 year old thinks when he's lost at night on such a terrain
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 16:45 |
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MrOzzy posted:In stead we got pictures of a 17 year old princess. You fool, now the mods will pay attention to your thread!
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 16:51 |
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Didn't work out too well got that Japanese family
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 17:04 |
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SLICK GOKU BABY posted:I thought this thread was gonna be about pooping. Same. Very disappointed. I have many midnight woods-pooping stories that need to be told.
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 17:06 |
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Dude I just got a wood splinter from a mop handle, I mean you really aren’t safe anywhere.
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 17:13 |
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Oh yeah, I remember being dropped in the middle of nowhere. I lived in Flevoland, which as everyone knows is just endless fields of nothing but farmland and perfectly flat, so we could literally see the town we had to walk back to. It was kinda pointless.
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 17:16 |
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jazzyhattrick posted:Heh heh... Droppings. The kid that poo poo in the middle of the road got it.
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 17:22 |
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MrOzzy posted:Al least you knew you could find your way home. It wasn't a test it or a thing here, it a string of behavior. I wasn't crying out of fear it was part of a growing awareness that I was alone in the world and probably had no future.
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 19:00 |
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fist4jesus posted:It wasn't a test it or a thing here, it a string of behavior. same but constantly since birth through writing this post
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# ? Jul 22, 2019 19:11 |
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Um... strip searched??
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# ? Jul 23, 2019 07:13 |
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hockey jockey posted:Um... strip searched??
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# ? Jul 23, 2019 07:24 |
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I live in the middle of a big city in the western US and see coyotes walking down the sidewalk a few times a year so ya no children are being dropped off in the middle of the woods at night here "fuckin' pussy millenials!" - nyt probably
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# ? Jul 23, 2019 07:24 |
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we do this in america too it's called "having tweaker parents"
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# ? Jul 23, 2019 07:31 |
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yeah there are bears and poo poo in the woods here i think u would go to jail if you did that and something happened.. enjoying the stories though
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# ? Jul 23, 2019 07:32 |
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I liked the people slamming the NYT/making jokes for running an article about a real thing and also sort of revealing they have no goddamn idea how empty of human life most of north america is.
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# ? Jul 23, 2019 11:32 |
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Yeah here in NA our woods tend to be full of flora and fauna that's legitimately dangerous, you don't go loving around out there unless you're properly equipped and know what you're doing.
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# ? Jul 23, 2019 11:52 |
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Coasterphreak posted:Yeah here in NA our woods tend to be full of flora and fauna that's legitimately dangerous, you don't go loving around out there unless you're properly equipped and know what you're doing. Also in the Netherlands the furthest point from any human structure is something like 2 kilometers while in Canada youd be lucky to find one within 200 in most of the country. Edit: Used the wrong n-country Barudak fucked around with this message at 12:56 on Jul 23, 2019 |
# ? Jul 23, 2019 12:01 |
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Hell, thinking back, my elementary school legitimately had cultivated wooded trails behind the playground that you could run around on during recess... till the second kid got bitten by a copperhead.
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# ? Jul 23, 2019 12:09 |
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Barudak posted:Also in Norway the furthest point from any human structure is something like 2 kilometers while in Canada youd be lucky to find one within 200 in most of the country. You got Norway confused with Netherlands but otherwise fair point I guess.
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# ? Jul 23, 2019 12:25 |
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Yeah, Norway is pretty empty and full of forests. In many ways it's more like America and Canada than Europe. We pretty much shot all the predators about 200 years ago though.
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# ? Jul 23, 2019 12:28 |
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Randarkman posted:Yeah, Norway is pretty empty and full of forests. In many ways it's more like America and Canada than Europe. We pretty much shot all the predators about 200 years ago though. But I thought you guys were all about rehabilitation.
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# ? Jul 23, 2019 12:35 |
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# ? Apr 17, 2024 04:39 |
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Barudak posted:Also in Norway the furthest point from any human structure is something like 2 kilometers while in Canada youd be lucky to find one within 200 in most of the country. If you drop off a kid at the top end of Norway (y'know, in the arctic circle), they're not coming back.
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# ? Jul 23, 2019 12:42 |