Summer camp memories

[carnation]

Okay, folks, here I am at camp in Alabama--the camp unexpectedly needed another nurse so I'm here with a bunch of my daughters for a week. I miss my husband! Can y'all brighten my day by posting some of your camp memories, especially funny ones?

[dc1]

When I was younger my parents used to send me to a camp in GA called "Short Mountain". It was some kind of christian camp...

Anyway, we would go horseback riding like everyday. Well there was this guy who was afraid of his horse, so was going REALLY slow in front of me and constantly stopping. We kept getting farther and farther away from our group. I got angry at this guy, so I snapped a switch off of a tree and whacked the horses behind. The horse freaked out and took off through the woods!! The boy started screaming and crying as the horse smashed through bushes and try to brush him off by hitting trees and stuff. The couselor came hauling rear to see what had happened. Eventually they got the horse to stop, and the boy walked back to camp crying. I was all innocent: "I have no idea what happened Mr. Jarell, the horse just wigged out"

It sounds mean now, but it WAS funny when it happened.

[carnation]

Thank you, dc1, and I would like to hear some more funny camp stories! Know why? Because I am up way past my bedtime because the other nurse SNORES (this is the third night)and then she gets up at 5 AM (with her loud alarm) and then putters loudly around the room until I get up! We don't have to be up until 7:30!

AND--then she takes a big fat 3-4 hour nap in the afternoon! I so need to read funny stuff if I'm gonna be up all night!

[KayDeeCareBear]

Ooh, Summer camp stories!

ROTC summer camp, 1998, junior year in High school behind me. I could SO not wait to get there!

I HATED the first day. The only girl left in my cabin that didn't have a canoeing partner yet was the only other girl that had no idea how to canoe... So, it was just me and her, on a river, with no idea what we were doing. It was supposed to be an experienced person paired with someone inexperienced, if possible... Or at least two inexperienced people that could adapt. Halfway though, she pulled her paddle out of the water, scared, and I had to learn how to steer from the front of the canoe! Fun. Well, as if that wasn't enough, the current picked up and before we could react, we were thrown into a mess of branches and stuff that were laying across the river. BIG FAT HAIRY brown spider FALLS on my hand, but before I could throw it, it bit me! Our canoe "partners" (the two counselors that were bringing up the rear) and our actual canoeing buddies (two guys in a canoe that were even worse than my partner and I) tell me that the spider was prolly a brown recluse, and unless I got help, I could DIE in 3 hours. So. Luckily, the really cute counselor that we liked to call "Air Force Man (TM)" pulls out an anti-venom kit from the firs aid bag, and wraps up my hand. Well, I couldn't paddle anymore, because my hand was sore. so we kinda linked up end to end with me holding on the the canoe in front (the counselor's) and the boys held on the the back of our canoe. It kinda worked. My hand kept falling asleep, so we kept having to catch the canoe again. Finally I got sick of it and said, basically, I may as well help out if I'm gonna die. I was feeling fine, so I started paddling again. Everything's cool now, right? No! The sky just OPENS and it starts to friggin' POUR! Thankfully, there was no thunder. That came later, after we passed the halfway point. When that happened, we "docked" our canoes on a bank, and Airforce man (TM) jumps out and promptly sinks down to his ankles in mud. But, we couldn't stay in the metal canoes while it was thundering, so we waited it out for a half hour, till the unexplained storm was over. Well, after being happily back on the water, we hit a small bit of rapids. It may be fun to point out at this point that by now, there were no teams left within MILES of us. We were the last three canoes in hearing range. Anyway, the boys' canoe snags on a rock and a big hole ends up in the bottom. We have to get the canoe back, since we have to account for it, so we do what they told us to in case of a leak. Stuff some weeds in it. Did that. It was still leaking, though not as badly, and we only had to bail the water out of it every 15 minutes or so. We figured, okay, that had to be the last of our bad luck, right? Nah. At one point, I looked down to see that my feet were wet. I don't really think I need to tell you that somewhere along the line, our canoe popped a rivet and started leaking. So, I won't.

The rest of the trip was thankfully uneventful, and we spent just about 7 hours on that 12 mile course.

And it all that time... We only flipped once: 5 minutes into the trip.

And the other 4 days at camp, I will post tomorrow!

[chi-o_cat]

I went to Girl Scout camp, and we were arranged into units by age. Happy Hollow was the youngest, then Fox Glen, then Indian Rock, and Tall Timbers was for the oldest campers.

There was a girl at camp I knew who was a year older, so she was in Indian Rock while I was in Fox Glen. One day at lunch she invited me to sit with her and her Indian Rock friends. I felt very special getting to sit with a whole table of older girls. UNTIL....the end of the meal when each unit stood up and sang their theme song (such as “Fox Glen, Fox Glen, we’re heroes til the end…” I don’t remember the rest of the words, but it was to the tune of “Hi Ho, Hi Ho” from Snow White & the Seven Dwarves”). When it was Fox Glen’s turn, I was the only one standing up at my table, and I felt incredibly self-conscious standing there singing by myself. I remember my friend seeing I felt awkward, and she sang along, sitting, to make me feel better. I guess it worked, because I still remember it. And that was a long time ago.

Another thing from camp that has stuck in my brain all these years is that every day the counselors would inspect our tents, and whoever had the neatest tent would get to have “Rusty the Bear” (a stuffed animal) stay in their tent that night. It was a big deal each day at lunch or dinner. And whoever did the “voice” for Rusty when he announced the winner would always say that the winning tent looked “B-E-A-U-tiful!” So to this day, every time I spell the word beautiful, I am hearing it in my head as “B-E-A-U-tiful.”

[LXA SE285]

I went to Cub Scout day camp the summer after fourth grade. It was pretty dull and uneventful except for the day we went on a nature walk and some idiot in our group stepped on a yellow jacket nest on the ground. Every last one of us got stung.

They took us back to the mess hall/"ER" to get fixed up. One of the more country Scout moms took out her pack of Virginia Slims, unrolled the cigs, wet the tobacco with spit, and slapped it on our stings with a Band-Aid to draw out the venom.

[carnation]

That really works! A bunch of my Girl Scouts got attacked at a pow-wow and some Native Americans ran over with tobacco and applied it and it worked fast.

[Titchou]

My main memory of camp was getting in the car to come home and telling my father "we aren't ever doing this again." And I didn't....I'm not cut out for deprivation...

[khlkcca]

After 8 years as a camper and 1 as a counselor there are so many to choose from. I’ll share three.

1) There was a really cute maintenance guy that wore really short cutoff jean shorts. Senior girls cabin made up a song that we sang every time we saw him. (Think 80s Nair commercial) “Ted wears short shorts, Ted wears short shorts. If Ted wears short shorts we’ll all wear short shorts.”

2) My last summer as a camper we were out on a trail ride on the horses. A horse fly landed on my horse and started stinging. My horse was bucking and jumping all over. The counselor is yelling at me to hit the horse fly, but I was afraid hitting the horse fly would mean hitting the horse and making it worse.🙄 I did finally kill the horse fly and didn’t fall off the horse.

3) One of my camp friends got burnt on the tip of her nose when someone turned around and hit her with a marshmallow. She spent the rest of the week with a burnt nose.

[Sister Havana]

When I went to day camp in 1984, there was a summer-long argument in my group over who was better, Prince or Duran Duran. We were fairly evenly divided between Prince fans and Duran Duran fans. In the middle of the summer, one of the Duran Duran girls decided to defect to the Prince fan side, and it was a huge deal - the Prince fans gloated, while the Duran Duran fans felt horribly betrayed. For 10 and 11 year old girls, this was SERIOUS BUSINESS. Is this not the most 80s camp story ever?

[zTaalum]

Originally Posted by carnation

Okay, folks, here I am at camp in Alabama--the camp unexpectedly needed another nurse so I'm here with a bunch of my daughters for a week. I miss my husband! Can y'all brighten my day by posting some of your camp memories, especially funny ones?

I went to summer camp in Alabama? I wonder if it is the same place? I always had tons of fun both as a camper and a JC. My favorite memory was finally getting a group of 6 year old girls in the shower and big black snake falling from the rafters scaring these girls to the point that it took 3 days to get them to shower again.

[Cheerio]

Our Girl Scout Camp had six units with 20-40 girls in each. Each camper and college-age counselor/leader was given a nickname at the start of their visit; one of the Unit Two leaders was a redhead from Australia and used the nickname Kiwi. My memory can still hear Kiwi's loud, accented voice calling us to assembly: "UNIT TWO! UNIT TWO!"

Another of my unit's leaders taught our group the Phi Mu fraternity songbook tune "Picture A Girl", with the renamed title "Picture A Camp" and re-worked lyrics, to sing at the final night's whole camp fireside performances. As we spelled-out the name of our camp each letter indicated something funny/memorable about our camp experience, for instance: C is for Canoeing, A is for Archery and Australia, M is for Mud because it rained, P is for swimming in the Pool, E is for Eating good foods, and so on. Although I do not recall the name of that Phi Mu leader, she had brown hair and played the guitar as she taught us the Phi Mu tune.

[LXA SE285]

Originally Posted by Sister Havana

When I went to day camp in 1984, there was a summer-long argument in my group over who was better, Prince or Duran Duran. We were fairly evenly divided between Prince fans and Duran Duran fans. In the middle of the summer, one of the Duran Duran girls decided to defect to the Prince fan side, and it was a huge deal - the Prince fans gloated, while the Duran Duran fans felt horribly betrayed. For 10 and 11 year old girls, this was SERIOUS BUSINESS. Is this not the most 80s camp story ever?

When I was in high school, I was a witness to a freshman girl fight over Duran Duran. Apparently it had to whether Simon Le Bon or John Taylor was the coolest. Amid the hair pulling and slapping, an onlooker who was cheering one of them on yelled, "DO IT FOR JOHN!" :/