did you attend SUMMER CAMP?

Somehow the concept of summer camp came up the other day and my wife and I were really puzzled why this is such a iconic reference point because absolutely nobody we knew ever did this. Then again we basically grew up in the woods so there would have been no point.

I did go away for a sports related camp once, and other kids I know did similar activities or church based things but never the woods / canoeing / making beaded wallets / counselors / sort of deal.

I went to "writer's camp" one summer in Boise on a scholarship. Once again, it would have been a lot more fun if I were into soft drugs and guitar like all my camp/terrible poet peers were. I was staying at a stranger's house and they put a tent out back so I could have the "camp experience." It was weird. In addition to the tent, the woman and her daughter hosting me had absolutely no food, at least compared to what I was used to (having bowl after bowl of Malt O'Meal generic bagged cereal all afternoon). They did give me a Mazzy Star poster though so that was cool. In retrospect, this doesn't much sound like camp.

they put a tent out back so I could have the "camp experience"

omg

Also I got free tickets to a No Doubt concert; this kind of thing is equally atypical of a camp.

the world needs a graphic novel charting abbbottt's path from mormon child to sui generis adult

(probably said this before but it's true)

seriously

\\\

When I was (a year younger than I should have been) I worked at the Boy Scout camp Laura linked upthread. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. There was this one guy C.A. who'd come into my tent at night -- every night -- and dump a bucket of lakewater on me, because I'd "make a weird noise." Another time I was in the shower and this dude, who was a fourth generation staff member, shat on the floor in front of me and pushed me into it. Also, I once got stoned with a bunch of the senior employees who thought it would be funny to abandon me in the woods without a flashlight. Eventually I complained to the camp director, and he did absolutely nothing. EXCEPT: next week at the staff meeting he called me up and told me he had a special award for me. The award: A trophy with a sprayed-gold shellacked tampon glued to the top and covered in gooey catsup. I was asked to put the award on the floor, straddle it, and everybody chanted some song about "BITCH OF THE WEEK" Trophy.
So fuck Boy Scouts, they're miserable and awful and I hope the organization burns to the fucking ground (and I even did an Eagle Scout project).

― Remy (x Jeremy), Thursday, July 28, 2005 10:38 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh, and I was nicknamed "Black Stallion" because I'd been pushed off teh edge of a bunk onto a metal joist sticking out of a steamer trunk. The joist went up under my knee, and since it was camp I was LIFTED OFF by an older staff member who could pull me vertically in the air. Then he dropped me and told me to 'walk to the health center for stitches, if you need them."
A few days later, when I was on crutches, this kid Aiyut (?) thought it would be funny to rename me "Black and Blue Stallion" so he did, and he accomplished this by grabbing my nipples 2-3 times / day and twisting them until I screamed. This caught on (apparently it's called "toolboxing" and for the rest of the summer my coworkers (all of whom were 2-5 years older than me) would grab me by the front of the shirt and twist so hard that I had a black-and blue chest for +/- 3 months. My nickname by the end of the summer? "Toolbox."

― Remy (x Jeremy), Thursday, July 28, 2005 10:44 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Another time, after I'd spent all night -literally- grading these 70+ papers kids had written for their merit badges (hey! send your kids to camp so they can write fucking papers! summer vacation!) and I was nodding, trying not to fall asleep at the breakfast table in the mess hall. This kid "Thomm" asked me if I wanted to know a trick to stay awake, and I said (naively), Sure! So he gathers arounnd all of the senior staff, most of my coworkers and a lot of the campers, and he says "we're gonna teach Toolbox how to stay awake" and he asked me if I was ready. I said "sure" and he punched me in the face as hard as he could. Drew blood and all. Everybody roared with laughter. And he said "you sure as shit ain't gonna fall asleep no more."
― Remy (x Jeremy), Thursday, July 28, 2005 10:58 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

JFC

wau remy, those are some wacky wickedly sadistic summer camp hijinks!

uh

fuc

never went to camp (except the week long bible-y one). my two best friends went to jewish summer camp every year tho and i always kind of resented them for it because a) i was effectively alone for most of the summer b) they were def having more fun than i was

i went to sleepaway camp (campfire boys and girls) for a few years. i lost interest in it but my sister went on to become a counselor. i also did music camp at UT austin where we stayed in the dorms... which is a sort of wilderness? in college i went several times to an artist's residency/summer art school in the woods to take classes. that was the best one because it's like camp but everyone is older, less awkward, and drunk.

this is a big canadian and jewish and especially jewish-canadian thing.

― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki)

YES.

nope, but my kids will be doing a day camp thing this summer

I attended Space Academy, which was kinda like Space Camp except for secondary school kids. Does that count? Weren't during the summer, tho; Easter vay-cay.

ha I did not know this was a widespread Canadian thing. is that why Camp Caribou ever made it as a tv show?

I went to various camps from around ages 10-13. They were all bible-y but I only recall one of them being pushy about it. They actually got like an evangelical preacher to come and speak for an evening and at the end of his preaching he invited everyone to ~come forward and accept jesus~. The counsellor in my cabin also told us that soap operas are amoral and made us promise not to ever watch them.

i went to YMCA camp age 9 and then a catholic camp ages 10-12. two weeks, sleep away, really enjoyed it. lotsa great memories of running around in the woods, making stupid lanyards, riding decrepit mulish horses, sneaking off the camp grounds and getting lost in a corn field, raiding girls camp.

lolling at the poll options. I spent two summers as a 13 and 14 year old at a music camp in Maine, which was both where I lost my virginity and was first introduced to weed, and those weren't even the highlights. Place was a blast, my first taste of freedom away from my parents as a teenager.

hahaha i missed the poll options. while i didn't "get laid" i kissed a girl for the first time and i liked it.

I attended Space Academy, which was kinda like Space Camp except for secondary school kids. Does that count? Weren't during the summer, tho; Easter vay-cay.

I always wanted to go to Space Academy after Space Camp. Too expensive though, I had to win a scholarship to go the first time. My childhood dreams were crushed after that.

while i didn't "get laid" i kissed a girl for the first time and i liked it.

You should write a song about the experience!

i went to camp in the late 60s, fond memories of the counselors whipping out acoustic guitars and leading us in protest songs around the campfire

several years of Boy Scout camp, including a 10 day hiking expedition at Philmont, plus two years of German camp for high school credit at Waldsee, plus a week of journalism camp which kind of turned into "a week of hanging out at the U of M ordering pizza and roaming Dinkytown" plus a week of ACDA regional honor choir and two weeks of All-State choir (which don't count because those were either at colleges or in hotels)

I want to go to German camp!

i am hardly even understanding how remy's horrific camp experiences were allowed to happen

German camp was SO AWESOME; it was basically a German village built in the woods near a lake and if you were in high school, you could go for a month and do intensive study that would skip you a year ahead in high school. They had other languages too; at the end of the month session, there was a huge International Day when everyone met at either the German camp or the Norwegian camp and had a big day long festival of food, music, dancing and crafts representing all of the camps.

http://www.concordialanguagevillages.org/newsite/

I recommend anyone with kids start saving money now to send them to this because it's seriously life-changing and awesome.

Woah! That sounds really neat.

x-posts Jesus Christ Remy. I didn't even read that until just now. WTF? I mean, seriously. That was all at the same camp during the same summer? That's horrific.

i went to camp for a week or so when i was 12. it was a camp my brother had gone to before because it specialized in diabetes care and they had this week+ open to siblings. so it had a more responsible vibe to it, considering kids could die in more ways than non-diabetic kids could die. it was fine but the days were way too structured, always thing after thing and so many people. i got a lot of mosquito bites, had my period halfway through, felt shy most of the time but was good at sports so mostly just swam and ran around a lot. the location was quite nice, off the west coast of vancouver; we had to take a boat there. i remember it pretty clearly, but i remember anything out of the ordinary pretty clearly.

I never had anything approaching that type of experience at Boy Scout camp, thank god

although a kid in our troop did break someone's arm once

i did not get laid but some other kids and i were giving each other piggy back rides and this guy who liked me got a boner when i was piggy backing him. i ignored it.

uh, obv referring to Remy and not rrrobyn (although it is true that I never started menstruating halfway through camp)

Diabetic camp! My little brother went to one every summer and some winters. I liked the name a lot because it's an anagram of Idaho: HODIA.

http://www.hodia.org/images/navigation/topnav_logo.gif

Remy's camp mates and leaders were fucking unconscionable!

voted "and i got laid" because kissing is basically getting laid when you're 12

remy's stories are so terrifying and horrible: you poor kid.

'summer camp' basically isn't much of a thing in the UK, but the music stuff i did meant i went on a couple of week-long 'summer schools', held in rural boarding schools that were empty for the holidays. One with a children's choir, which i did for like six or seven years running; one with a youth orchestra which i think i only did once or twice. Only a bit of mandatory physical activity, mostly just preparing for an end-of-week concert that all the parents get to come to.

the youth orchestra one involved a certain amount of getting high in the woods, but not much because we were nice middle-class kids and terrrrified of getting caught; the choir one originally involved a lot of sex gossip (a lot of who's-been-caught-in-whose-bed, plus one year there was the story of one wanking competition in the older boys' dorm that became such common currency there were skits about it in the end-of-week variety show thing), though my cohort were pretty chaste.

(nb the end-of-week variety show thing happened the day before the end-of-week concert: there were no wanking-related jokes made in front of parents (except the parents who were present at the camp as 'chaperones') (er))

I went to sleepaway camp many times as a kid (only child, busy parents) and on separate occasions before middle school (but never full summer camp)

* ended up in the infirmary for a whole week because i was covered head to toe in hives. did not make friends, did not get laid.
* slept in a tent with these two girls who didn't know what a possum was, so they kept calling it a monkey and this was the funniest thing i had ever heard. they called me shrimpy. did not get laid.
* went 1 week with friend angela while parents were away for 2 weeks and she told everyone in the cabin that i was a terrible person and that they should hate me, so they did. i made no friends, did not get laid, and then had to spend an additional week at angela's house while she ignored me because i had nowhere else to go.

day camp too? band camp?

Oh man, not summer camp related, but I was hanging out with a Swiss exchange student in high school when she saw her first possum and it was this huge monster of a possum snarling at us in the headlights. She was wide-eyed scared asking me "what the fuck was that? was that real?"

I went to this adventure camp type thing one summer and got my two bottom teeth almost entirely ripped out of my face. Fun.

that does sound like an adventure

I several times went to a hippy British summer camp thing for the kids of lefty bourgeois Londoners but was too young to get laid. Does that count?

I started going to summer camp one week each summer when I was ten and continued until I was fourteen - so, five summers. It was a church-sponsored camp, but it wasn't particularly churchy. We slept in barracks-like cabins full of bunk beds. We had a swimming hole where two creeks met and formed a pool. We sang Kum-By-Yah around the campfire every night. I kid you not.

I always had a good time. I never got laid there, though. :-(

no summer camp bizniss in Australia afaik, except school camps.

I imagine summer camp = the movie Meatballs, so if it's okay I'm picturing all of you that have confirmed you have been to summer camp as 70's california teens with shiny hair

I only went to Space Camp on year and I was 10 and did not get laid.

― Jeff, Tuesday, May 29, 2012 6:29 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I wanted Australia to have space camp SO badly growing up, Jeff I don't care if you didn't get any action you are my hero and I am SUPER JEALOUS. (you too kingfish)

I also wanted to go to Space Camp but that was mostly because of the movie with Joaquin Phoenix when he was still Leaf.

http://www.spacecamp.com/files/jinx.jpg

And because I was a fat kid and thought I'd get to eat a lot of astronaut ice cream.

Which isn't even good but, hey, IT IS FROM SPACE.

Went to Girl Scout camp for 3 years at ages 8, 9 and 10. It was pretty miserable. Sleeping in a freezing "tabin" (tent, pretty much, with a frame). Having to bunk with lame chicks. Having to poop in an outhouse that was a quarter mile away. The bugs. Awful food. Dehydration, fatigued all the time. Horrible campfire songs. After every meal we'd sing for, no lie, 2 hours. It was like six hours of singing a day.

When I was 14, though, I went to MUSIC CAMP that was PRETTY GREAT. It was in the mountains at a fancy resort. We had our own condos - like 6 chicks per condo. And there were boys. I didn't get laid. But I did have a lot of fun. I also told people I was a vegetarian even though I totally wasn't. I also moshed at the end of camp dance.

https://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=497686788782&set=t.556118782&type=3&theater

1994 with a way-too-young beard, but actual hair that I miss, giving a noogie to a camper. I was basically the equivalent of a counselor-in-training at this point. Did not go on to be a counselor because I missed my friends too much, who were driving around the whole summer discovering drugs. It was ostensibly a church camp, but mostly we just did all the awesome generic camping stuff: ropes course, pottery shed, raft trip, square dancing, etc.

Girl Scout camp otm

We had to hike at night in the middle of a stream and then bump our butts down "Fanny Hill", a muddy, rocky incline that led to a smooth combination of lower body bruises and the occasional leech iirc.

i went to camp Rainbow's End for the gifted and talented and just fyi even nerdling d&d kids will start whooping the shit out of each other and tormenting smaller geek varieties and calling each other fag when isolated in the middle of the woods somewhere. i spent most of my time being to big to pick on and avoiding activities in general. it was ok.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7243/7311862320_6843f2bb13_c.jpg

Which one is me???

the one with the jeans???

Front row, Chuck Taylor's.

hipster

Yeah the american style camps just werent done in Aus, as VG said, though some ppl did Scouts and stuff, I suppose. I did go on one Christian "camp" (well, staying in dorms at a convention centre based in a rugged river/ mountain area just out of town) but that was over Easter, so stupidly cold. And stupidly religious, so embarrasingly much that I stopped being religious after that weekend out of disgust. I think I wrote about all that on some thread here years ago. It sucked, not because it was traumatic but because it was insanely BORING and cheesy.

Oh wait, we did go on a school camp in yr 12 for biology/geology classes, where we were obstensibly researching a rocky coastal area in a national park about 3 hrs drive from where I lived. Gorgeous coastal country, a place I was actually familiar wiht anyway aside from the trip (as my cousins lived nearby) but jesus christ it was ruined by the prissy entitled princesses in my class who spent the whole 2-3 days whining non stop abiut EVERYTHING. Pit toilets? THE HORROR. We have to sleep in a TENT? OMG. We cant have SHOWERS? FFS you dumb cows its a CAMPING TRIP. It was a rugged one, and yes we were pushed too hard (4 hour hike over very steep cliff/rock/beach areas that ruined everyone) but despite that, the prissy princesses were whining so hard, I spent the whole trip fuelled by a little fire of smug schadenfreude.

Jeff you are my new hero! :D

DJP are you prepared to send the twins to german camp

I will be!