Tales from camp

This summer I worked at a Girl Scout camp as a counselor. I pretty much had the best summer of my life. I'm feeling a little bit homesick for camp lately so I thought I'd use this caffeine-driven time frame of wakefulness (there is no antonym for coma in case you were wondering what that jumble of ill-fitting word salad was) to good use and talk about camp! I spent from June 22nd to August 20th working for Camp Four Echoes. It was the best summer of my life so far. I got paid to go to summer camp. I was always the kid who wanted to spend more time at camp, I wish I had been clever enough to hide when my parents came to get me like my boss did when she was a camper.

When I first got to staff training, I had been driving for 3 hours after spending the night at my roommates' house in the Tri-Cities. The night before I had driven 3 and a half hours. We arrived at the girl scout office and met the people we were going be spending then next 8 and a half weeks with. I was scared. I was almost sure I wouldn't fit in with the other staff and I would be that one weird kid every group has. Well turns out that I couldn't hold a candle to some of these guys' weird. I'm looking at you Goggs. As staff training went on the closer we got. That's how I became close with Haddock and Vector. I don't think I got particularly close to anyone else at start of staff training (before we actually moved to camp) because we were all sort of testing the waters with each other. Except for me and Haddock. I think it took us like 4 days to establish we're the same person.

After moving out to camp we were all sleeping in the woods and eating food cooked outside. That really bonds people together. Is that why people go camping? I love camping but some of my friends who for the sake of this post shall remain nameless (I'll give you a hint, his name rhymes with sharrod). And when you have to go for a hike to take a shower... the motivation is not exactly high. Especially when everybody else looks and smells like you. So that really helped with the bonding. Even after staff training I wasn't close with the people that I call "my people" with the exception of Haddock who was in my cabin for the livin' in the woods with no close showers portion of training.

After a short break between training and camp starting we had our first session, and while it was not the worst session of the summer... it was very difficult. I had a camper who choked another, one who wouldn't walk, and one who cried at everything. By the last day were were tired of it. We had about 14 campers and 2 of them refused to go on our last hike. Ace and I decided to stay with the two girls in our unit and ask admin staff for help. During staff training we had established a radio call for if we needed admin help: gator aid. So I got on the radio:
Me: "Sunny to Gem."
Harmony: "Harmony to Sunny what's up?"
Me: "We need some gator aid in singing pines."
Harmony:"Ok let me see what I can do."
I wasn't there for this next part but I'm told this is how it went-
Harmony: I need gator aid for singing pines
Haddock: I don't have any... but I have lemonaid
Harmony got back on the radio-
Harmony: "I can do lemonaid."
Sunny thinking it was a code word: "What's lemonaid?"
Harmony: "It's lemons, and water, and sugar, and you drink it"
Sunny: "I NEED A MEMBER OF ADMIN IN MY UNIT NOW!"
Harmony: "OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I'll be right there!"

And that was this weeks fun story from camp. As well as my first bonding moment with Ace who is in fact one of "my people". :)