posted June 06, 2001 09:47 PM            

My fondest memories:
[1] Summer before 4th grade (1986), a couple of my friends berated me because I never cussed. They made me say "bitch." I was never the same!
[2] I think this was the year before that: We had a contest/rivalry between cabins. There were four groups of about 8 of us in this one particular area. Each cabin was given a banana. The residents of each cabin had to try to sabotage the others' bananas — the idea being not to let the banana out of your sight because that's when it was vulnerable to attack. The cabin with the most "together" banana by the end of a week won. It was brutal. And lots of fun sneaking around squishing bananas. One cabin's banana was mostly black skin and slush by the end of the week.
[3] I remember the mess hall. This was Camp Tallchief out in the woods of Oklahoma. There was an enormous wooden Indian (Tallchief) inside. This mess hall doubled as the presentation area where we got awards and stuff. But as we ate, Tallchief watched over us.
[4] Ugh. I remember the sludgy, gritty hot chocolate for breakfast that, oddly, I couldn't ever get enough of! Mmyuckmmyuck.
[5] At the end of some boy-girl day camp I went to one summer, the adults rigged up kiddie pools of baked beans, Jell-O, pudding, etc. ... and it was an obstacle course that we were supposed to navigate through. But it was really just a big food fight. Naturally, we mainly sloshed around in food and threw handfuls of it (and water balloons) at each other. Then we got hosed off. Damn, that was fun.
[6] A bad memory: One summer at GS resident's camp, a girl in my cabin was afraid of crickets. One night, she kept most of us awake by repeating "I can't sleep, I can't sleep, I can't sleep" in this moany, whiny voice for what seemed like hours.
[7] My older sister once defied the no-food-in-the-mail rule to send me orange gum. I was popular after that. Hee.
[8] The best memory of all time: Girl Scout Camp, 1986 ... Two of my friends from my elementary school and I signed up for canoeing on the same day so we could row out together. Well, we rowed way past where we were supposed to stop and then beached ourselves on the rocks of this island bank. Instead of one of us getting out to shove the canoe away and then jump back in, we synchronized a rocking motion until we were off the rocks ... and then kept going and going until we capsized. At that depth, we couldn't touch bottom, so we hung there with the canoe over our heads, drenched, until we could tread back toward the island. We paddled back to the spot where we started and got yelled at for capsizing.
[9] Another good one: Re-enacting scenes from "Dirty Dancing" for some dumb performance we had to do. We had the soundtrack. We also sang lots of "Sylvia? Yes, Mickey? How do you call your lover?" lip synching.
[10] Bad, bad memory: We did swimming every day, and it would be scheduled in whenever you wanted it. Well, at one part of the day, the pool would be just covered with horseflies. That bit. Hard. We'd line up outside the pool to get in, and we'd just stand there for 10 minutes getting welts.

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Sid Vicious Marshmallow Crunch - They're tragically malicious! — Quinn the Eskimo

posted June 07, 2001 03:52 AM            

I have an eustachian tube problem that makes it very difficult for me to hold my breath without physically pinching my nose shut, so I have bad memories of swimming lessons and the associated ridcule.

I drowned at camp when I was 8. That wasn't fun. (Beating the shit out of me and Frenching me -- I mean CPR and mouth-to-mouth -- did the revival trick, however.)

TMI WARNING: <tmi>I saw another man's erect penis for the first time at Boy Scout Camp. It was rather shocking because I've always been a pointing-straight-out man, but this guy was a pointing-straight-at-his-chin man. I say man, but we were both about 15 or so. Still. Terry really got a thrill out of showing us his penis. Wonder if he was gay, or just really proud?</tmi>

posted June 07, 2001 05:54 AM            

1. Archery, this was 4H camp and most of us were farm girls, we could shoot the arrows through the haybales and into the woods behind. Then we could spend 5 minutes looking for our arrows.

2. Archery again, the time a girl disobeyed the "no arrows near bows until everyone is behind the line" rule. She shot the instructor in the leg, it went into his thigh for about an inch. Archery was over for that year, luckily it happened on our last day of camp.

3. Swimming in a lake at 8:00 a.m. sucks! The air was cold, the water was cold, and WE were cold. Brrrrrr!

4. Making people run around the mess hall for putting their elbows on the table for the third time. This was special fun my last year when Jason Daday (yes, 4H camp was co-ed) would eat as fast as he could and spend the rest of mealtime putting his elbows on the table and running around the building.

The song goes like this, you sing the first verse to "If You're Happy and You Know It" and the second to "London Bridge":

Get your elbows off the table Jason Daday.
Get your elbows off the table Jason Daday.
We have seen you do it twice, and it isn't very nice.
Get your elbows off the table Jason Daday.

Round the building you must go, you must go, you must go!
Round the building you must go, you've been naughty!

5. Going to co-ed 4H camp was a blessing and a curse. We always had a dance and there was always some problems with couples (camper and counselor) sneaking off to be alone.

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Cleanliness has nothing to do with a clean house. - DL

Get your typos off your posts bruncher Skatie!

[This message has been edited by Skatie (edited June 07, 2001).]

IP: Logged

posted June 08, 2001 08:39 AM         

And the Miracle Whip thing.