did you attend SUMMER CAMP?

On my first day of camp (I think it was between 6th and 7th grade), pretty much immediately after my parents left, this kid who iirc was actually named Tommy Mottola whacked me in the balls with a pair of nunchucks. He was pretty spoiled and was always picking on other kids even though he was a big fat dork. He would also have crying breakdowns about shit.

A few years later, he was one of the first kids to bring a CD boombox to camp. I think he played Billy Joel CDs all the time. So he was being a prick one day like he almost always was, so I went back to the cabin on some made-up pretext and rubbed my cruddy camper finger all over the CD player's lens. He threw the biggest fucking fit when he tried to play Billy Joel that night.

Our camp had a bog walk which was always in disrepair, with boards rotting and sinking into the bog. I went through a rotten board up to my thigh and my shoe came off. I dug out the shoe, but there must be dozens of shoes in that bog, and maybe a couple boy scouts.

At Scout camp one year, there was this infamous kid named Nate in another troop. I had never seen him. Rumor was he had hit someone. Rumor was he smoked basket reeds. One day, we were walking past that troop's camp site, and a bored-sounding grown-up voice called out "Naaate, put down the axe..."

hahaha holy shit

i went to scout camp until, i broke my arm horribly on the last day of camp in the summer of 1990, and through a series of medical mishaps almost had to have my amputated, then almost died on the operating table, then had to have a tube inserted in my heart because they'd run out of veins for IVs in my arms, then had the tube later removed in a doctor's office with no anesthetic.

after which i stayed inside for the rest of my life.

upside was my parents felt so bad i got super mario three as a we're-sorry-you-almost-died present.

did you get laid tho

yes, by a sexy nurse

One year in scout camp, we were doing search-and-rescue training, all spread out across this enormous wooded hillside, walking in straight lines until presumably we were to find someone. I was shuffling along - this was pretty boring business actually, compared to like, rappelling or whatever - when I must have stepped on a wasp's nest, because all of the sudden I was covered in wasps. And so I did what you do when you get stung by wasps: I started yelling "fuuuuuuuuuuuucccck! shit! fuck! ow!" And the scoutmaster and his buddies turned around and proceeded to holler at me for cussing for a good 30 seconds before they realized that I was in pain and distress. So I got to walk down the hill (by myself) to the nurse's station where I chilled out for the rest of the afternoon.

This camp was also notable for offering Cröonchy Stars cereal for breakfast years after it was discontinued by Post.

the only interesting camp story i can remember is getting my (sister's) copy of siamese dream confiscated on the bus on the way there because the booklet has a picture where d'arcy is wearing a mesh shirt. i thought it was a cool picture but had no interest in boobs, but of course the kid next to me got all excited and attracted a counselor's attention.

all the guys in my cabin the last year i went liked the backstreet boys, and i wonder now whether that was coincidence or conspiracy

I was so fascinated by summer camp as a kid bcz obviously it is a recurring feature of much American children's lit/movies and of course Peanuts. I think I kind of thought it sounded fun even though I am totally a Charlie Brown and the closest I ever got to "summer camp" was one overnight stay in a youth hostel with a Christian youth group aged 13, which was p. much hell on earth and the moment I decided that, you know, fuck this Christianity concept

(a gang of mean girlz who I'd never seen at the youth group before turned up; meanwhile, it was my period, but the only toilets were 10 minutes' walk through a field from the sleeping area and my fellow less-cool-than-the-mean-girls companions kept waiting for me right outside the cubicle while I tried not to make any suspicious rustling noises, asking why I was spending so long in there)

so if that's how bad one night can be - and remy's post suggests it can be much, much worse - I think a week of it might have killed me. PS I did not get laid, obv

After 2 years at a Christian camp, I tried to shake it up (hoping it would be less unpleasant) and went to a secular week-away camp. It was worse, because the sex and hooking up kinds of cruelty were right out in the open, instead of being hidden behind embarrassed, still-mostly-innocent oblique references.

Er 3 yrs at the Christian camp, I should have said.

British kids don't really do summer camp but some of yr upper-middle class British teenagers go off to historical reenactment sites in country houses where 5% of you randomly get to be the Elizabethan Lord of the Manor's family and the rest of you get to be unwashed Tudor peasants working on the land and "below stairs" - two of my friends went to this for a couple of summers and came back and made us all very jealous for months afterwards with cryptic allusions to possible sexual and drug-related activity

(we were all p. sheltered, me especially so)

everyone else also went off to backpack along Hadrian's Wall the summer after A-Levels but by then I'd been scared out of ever going to any kind of event that I couldn't leave within 5 hours

I feel we have been culturally misled that summer camp = sexytimes

Haha, oh god, I didn't realise you could do those Ye Olde Upstairs Downstairs things as a camp. We did that sort of thing as an educational day trip at school, can't see how it would end up as anything other than Stanford Prison Experiment for minors when extended....

iirc you had to ~apply~ with a personal statement and ~be chosen~ and (get your mother to) sew your own costume! far too much effort for the likes of me

Did you guys go to Space Camp in Huntsville, AL or the one in Florida?

I grew up in Huntsville and went to Space Camp there in 1986. I don't remember any of the kids I met, but it would be cool if young ilxors crossed paths.

I didnt get to go to space camp there but i visited at one point and it was pretty much the best day ever.

isn't tombot from huntsville?

I remember someone else on here being from Huntsville...think it is tombot.

omg JF went to space camp too?

as an aside, it'd be HELLA cool if we had more ye oldecamp photos itt

omg JF went to space camp too?

I grew up in the middle of the space industry fwiw. My dad has worked for Nasa contractors since before I was born (and just retired in 2011).

I learned about it in a Drive By Truckers song 'While over there in Huntsville, puttin people on the moon" :D

I never had money for camp like in the movies. I went on tour with a marching band, which was like camp and was a total blast!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Tombot (or parents of tombot) definitely did time in Huntsville, but I don't know what the time frame was. . .

I went to Space Camp in Florida in 1990.

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!