Of the two others with me in the dining room's serving area [returning utensils from one of those infamous staff cookouts: "Tempus Fugit" anyone?], only one, not Joel O., was sufficiently cognizant of Arabic dialect and innuendo to initially join me that evening [after mid-night but considerably closer thereto than 3 a.m.] in what was in retrospect and current gruesome events a very morally repugnant pro-terrorist chant. [# 3 soon was able to pick up the CADANce.]
Leaving the dining hall we heard 3 things: A. Copious quantities of noise wafted from the A-field to which many of the participants had, quite inebriated [as was yours truly], retired from the campcraft area. B. Shattering glass [beer and other bottles] and the dumping of heavy items cascading towards us from the incinerator area. C. That most fearsome pitter patter of Our Boss's dainty feet!
Joel and Paule sprinted behind a tree. I, however, lagged so far behind. Given the geographical differential [not to mention the decade or two chronological disadvantage], flight would only have exaccerbated embarrassment had I been a cause of the awakening of camp's nuts and bolts [whom I always observed feverishly working at his desk long before the start of those pre-reveille runs into which I so sadistically conscripted many of you].
I don't recall if Peter G's first question was [words to the effect] "Who are those two idiots trying to hide behind a tree trunk which would not succeed in concealing an individual half the size of either of them?" My attempt to plead the fifth, after consuming one, was futile. But it did create a cooling off period affording THEM the opportunity the following morning's assembly to apologize and thus reacquire a modicum of dignity.
As to the "noise" inquiry, it commenced not with a "WHO" [I feared, but still do not know, that he had already ascribed it to me, me, me] but with a WHAT". ["What's that noise?" was, I believe, the exact quote.]
Hoping and praying [from the depth of my next week worth of tephillin donning] that he did not hear our Koranic Verses emanating from the serving area's muezzin [and give the configuration and raucous pandemonium of many snacks through which he had failed to stir, such was a possibility] but that instead it was the noises from one or both of the other arenas which had awakened him, I responded "Which noise?"
Surely the mythical response would have been more infuriating to such a post-midnight awakened early riser than had I "confessed" to having broken [with malice aforethought] all the dining hall windows. I do think that many geneuinely believed [and still believe] the myth. But I think both Paule and Joel had been disabused of it one evening some seven years ago at a Manhattan restaurant on Columbus and 81st Street when I recited the above scenario.
After breakfast the next day came a straw in the wind indicating what would prevail for close to two decades. "Someone" [come forward - do not fear being rear ended, again] approached me for the definition ["legal definition" was the way the inquiry went] of noise. Thinking it to have been engendered from the quasi-philosophical debate as to whether there would be a noise created by a tree falling in the wilderness if none had heard it, and having come long ago to a conclusion", I replied that one may consider noise to be, pure and simple, sound waves [and thus there would be a noise]. But one could also view it as the sensation of hearing [thus requiring someone to hear it, and that "somone" need only be, therefore, an animal with a functioning ear drum to create "noise"]. I do not know which definition the inquirer came to adopt [and I had soon come to realize the question to have been a statement based on anything but fact].
Websiters, please excuse the details, my apologies to those whom time and place may preclude cognizance of surrounding dynamics as well as to those who had enjoyed and accepted the myth [but now ought not in clear conscience claim, intellectually, to accept].
A good year to you and yours and may all problems be as minor as discerning the reality behind this myth and many others [but not all of them].
Uncle Moish
mark@lgpltd.com