Lacing up for the let-down.

Killing them didn't warrant this final outcome.
I was a kid. How could I've known better?

The nature camp I went to over
in Putnam County was having
its Native American week
and all of us elementary-aged campers
were excited as ever
running around through the woods
with our "Indian" names. My parents
had urged me against White Cloud
since it was the name of a popular
brand of toilet paper at the time.
I settled on something else
that to this day is forgettably sub par.

Our main project for the week
was to construct a miniature
Native American home
that our local indigenous people
may have lived in long ago:
a wigwam, a longhouse, some sort
of branch-and-bark shelter.
Setting to work on the shoebox-sized
house was easy. Never had my focus
been so keen. The twigs and birch bark
I'd so carefully gathered practically
fastened themselves together.
No one else was done by the time I'd finished
so I continued the fun by searching
for things to decorate my pint-sized
Injun family's yard. Tiny pine cones
became shrubbery. Some chunks of gravel
from the camp's parking lot were glued
to the cardboard "ground" in a circle
to signify a campfire. That afternoon
when I arrived home from my productive
day at camp I found something else
to use in my project.

The flowers on my father's rhododendron bushes
hadn't bloomed yet. Their buds looked
exactly like small ears of corn that'd look great
stacked up alongside my Native American home.
I walked up and down the driveway
picking the green buds from the bushes
and shoving them into my pockets
excited to bring them to camp the next day.
Sure enough, they looked exactly like corn
when I set them in place. My masterpiece
was complete. Had there been a prize for
creativity I would've won-- at least that's what
one of the counsellors told me in confidence
later on that day during a hike.

He didn't notice that anything was wrong
right away. Who looks at the plants in their
lawn that often? When the neighbor's rhododendron
bloomed beautifully a few weeks later, however
my father was puzzled and inspected his own specimens.
It was only a matter of time before the interrogation
commenced. Then, as now, I was a terrible liar
and didn't bother trying. I don't recall
if I was punished for my ignorantly overzealous
addition to my summer camp project
but I do know that I wished my dad had seen
how hard I'd worked at it and how proud of it I was.

Approval's been harder to come by since then.
I wish I'd never plucked those flowers.