A few years ago, I worked for the Boy Scouts of America at a camp in the north woods of Wisconsin. I spent every summer away at camp, and much of the year WISHING to be there. As a result I spent a lot of my time ACTING as if I were a professional boy scout camp counselor...even at college, surrounded by people who thought that my scouting behaviors were a bit odd.
For example, I picked up mannerisms at this boy scout camp that even still follow me around: I get oddly nostalgic when I smell campfires. I fight (and sometimes fail to fight) the urge to burst into song whenever the word 'announcement' is used, no matter what the social setting. I refer to my paycheck as 'peanuts' and sometimes call my apartment a 'stump' when asked where I live. Most oddly, I panic and feel the need to sprint down hills while undressing at the sound of high pitched sirens. Please re-read that sentence so you have a good visual of me taking my clothes off and sprinting when just the right tone of siren goes off.
The first three behaviors I mentioned are unsurprising. They're basic, common habits of lots of ex-counselors, no matter where you've worked. Every scout camp I've been to has the longstanding tradition of opening and closing campfires, and every single scout I've met has the longstanding tradition of being oddly and somewhat dangerous obsessed with making campfires, and hence my nostalgia at the scent.
Secondly, every camp has some strange singing traditions, such as ours where the word 'announcements' was a cue to the staff to waste time for a while. It usually meant that the staff was busy somewhere else, or a scoutmaster was having a problem, but in any case the word 'announcements' always brings me back to where I would burst into song at the slightest signal, a reflex as uncontrollable as being ticklish, or kicking when the doctor smacks your knee.
Third and the habit that seems the least likely to fade over time, we were not allowed to discuss our pay with the scouts nor our housing (a row of bungalows or old broken-in cabins) so we were paid in 'peanuts' and lived in 'stumps'.
The last behavior, that of disrobing, sprinting, and finding a local hill to run down (at the camp, the whole behavior was sometimes given the moniker 'strip-sprint-dive' for short), is a bit more difficult to explain, and much harder to convince others isn't some sort of mental deficiency.
At the camp, whenever a scout was missing during a swim or boating check, called buddy checks, there would be a signal to the east and west waterfront groups, both of which had enormous and unbelievably loud sirens. The rising wail would be heard for literally miles around, and was a call for the staff to get ready for an emergency, and the campers to sprint to their campsites.
Eve if they were just practice sirens, or if it was just a scout who forgot to sign out and was easily found, whenever a siren went off the same basic thing would happen; The scouts would sprint to their campsites, count their number, and send a messenger to the main staff area alerting us if anyone was missing, and who they were, as well as where they were last seen.
The staff, meanwhile, would all sprint to the waterfront, where we would perform (as macabre as it sounds) rescue dives, where you do a deep dive into murky water, and wave your hands in front of you, open your eyes, and swim as far forward along the bottom as possible, trying to find any possible missing campers, just in case they DID begin to drown. To do the whole exercise right, you have to not risk drowning yourself, so you are in just your underpants (female staff aren't supposed to be part of the diving, for obvious regulations). Generally, you are also usually out of breath, running through the woods from wherever you were working before this and, after only 1-2 dives, you're freezing cold and tired from diving down and up in deep water. You are also completely full of adrenaline. Overall, it's a rather traumatic and oddly invigorating experience, especially since we had never lost a scout for real, through my several years of false alarms and scary drills.
Perhaps now you're getting a sense of why this behavior sticks: It's a safety reflex, it's as much a conditioned response as a firefighter launching into the truck and taking off at their own piercingly loud signal, and no matter how far I go, that particularly sound of a siren still sets me off. I cannot seem to shake the strange instantaneous response to certain siren sounds of dropping what I'm doing, finding a hill to run down (the waterfront, obviously, is the lowest elevation in the camp) and stripping into my underpants. No, I don't always actually fully strip down and run anymore, but there is always that panicked moment of confusion when I realize I've taken my shirt off, or began unbuttoning it, and I look around to realize I'm not in the woods of Wisconsin, and that my actions seem quite strange to everyone around me. And if you think I'm exagerrating, let me tell you a story.
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That brings me to the real reason you're here to read; a brief and extremely embarrassing anecdote.
In 2010, I was at college at a big party. I was the fraternity social chair and I was awesome at it. I was schmoozing with the guests, I was partying with the best of them, and I was having a great time. I wandered from room to room like a cordial host making small talk and bro-talk (small-talk for bros, where you yell loudly how 'rad' and 'badass' everyone around is, instead of the weather or minor local current events). I watched a half dozen uncomfortably close dancing partners, and I walked out of the dancing room only to witness over and over embarrassed couples pretending they weren't making out under a staircase, or behind an open door. Basically, normal Frat-Party-Time.
As I walked back onto the dance floor, waving like a self-important idiot to everyone around (like the queen, but less classy), a new song started up and the intro had a rising and wailing siren sound. Maybe it was the fact that it was 1:00 AM, or maybe it was the few beers I'd had (social chair isn't allowed to get drunk, though: he has to run the event, so I wasn't particularly inebriated), but for some reason, I reacted exactly like I had with the scout camp.
I pushed through the crowd, ran to the door, and ripped off my shirt and began to sprint out the front door. I had my pants around my knees when I suddenly realized what I was doing, and turned around sheepishly. And, much to my surprise, instead of a hundred or so random people I barely knew sitting and mocking me, I saw about 15 others in similar states of undress.
I was about to ask them if THEY worked at a boy scout camp when one yelled, "BOULDER RUN!" (a streaking tradition where you run to the boulder at the center of campus) and threw down his boxers, tossed his shoes over his shoulder, and ran around me blindly into the night.
I didn't know quite what to do, since I was now the only person outside NOT completely naked, but I didn't feel like a Boulder run (because sprinting naked around a college campus isn't really my style) so I zipped up my pants, pulled the shirt back on, and walked back into the house. The crowd stared at me, and I realized that I had no explanation for why I had been the first person to apparently decide to streak. Instead of something clever or daring, I pushed my way back inside. Someone clapped me on the shoulder and exclaimed, "That was hilarious, I can't believe you got them to do a boulder run. Awesome prank." Though it wasn't my intent, I didn't correct anyone, and I wandered back upstairs to find myself a place to sit down and get away. After all, once you've taken off your parents in front of a few hundred strangers, it's probably time to call it a night.
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Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed! I always love hearing feedback about anything, from the site setup to the story I just told! If you want to read some more of my silly stories, check out "Shut Your Trap and Sing!" or "How Lightsabers Defeated Depression". 
back in the 1970's in the local newspaper the headline reads boy scouts of america become bare scouts of america it was at a boy scout in florida their motto always be prepared after reading it i thought it was 90 degrees or hotter that's why they were streaking they found way to be cool go naked
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