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It's 'I hope we never part!' Get it right or pay the price!

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by DrFrylock, Feb 23, 2011.

  1. tempest

    tempest
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    My parent's were pretty cheap. They figured that making me play alone in the woods was more frugal than camp, which is why I was very surprised when I was told that I was going to Space Camp during the summer between my 5th and 6th grade year. It was an okay experience. Lots of nerdy kids, but that didn't really matter since I was a nerd. Overall it was pretty uneventful. I got to meet the first US woman to spacewalk and was shuttle commander on our mission. The toys were pretty cool.

    After listening to all of the stories on here though, I'm feeling like I missed out on the classic camp experience. Makes me want to go to a trade show and see if I can make up for it.

    On a side note, Nettdata.... damn you. As a kid all the way through high school, all I wanted to be was a pilot. I still do. I'm not really sure what happened, I guess I wussed out.
     
  2. ec88

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    I went to a few different football and basketball camps throughout middle and high school. Between my junior and senior year, my football coach took a group of us down to Oregon for a linemen camp. I was played safety in high school and didn't care too much for offense but I ended up getting the starting tight end spot too so I was forced to go to this camp to learn more blocking fundamentals. The camp ended up being sort of like a mini combine for future recruits and holy shit did they kick my ass. We would be going half speed and I would still be on my ass at the end of the play.

    I also went to a week long summer church camp with my cousin a couple different times. It was an awesome camp and besides reading from the bible for about 30 minutes a day, it wasn't as churchy as I thought it would be.
     
  3. PewPewPow

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    My parents used to send me back to Belgium every summer to hang out with the family ,and I inevitably ended up spending some time in camps. My favorite by far was an archeology camp I went to when I was 16 and 17, the crowd was mostly 14-17. We slept in 20 man tents on some farm ground and biked to the beach every day to dig up this old fishing village. The focus of the camp it seemed though was to get piss-drunk, sunbathe, and get caught fucking in the girls' tents. Good times.
     
  4. Nettdata

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    Here's a really bad version of my "graduation" pic right after we were awarded our wings. I was 16, it was the early 80's.
     

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  5. Frank

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    Edit: Never mind, I'm an idiot that can't read.

    Focus: I went to boy scout camp every year when I lived in Vermont, they made us spend a ridiculous amount of time learning how toy use compasses. Glad I learned that with all the GPS technology we have today.
     
  6. Danger Boy

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    Ahem...
     

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  7. Crazy Wolf

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    Dude, are you fucking retarded?

    Besides, that couldn't have been from the 1870s, Mr. Lilienthal was too busy killing Frenchmen to be teaching Canadians anything about heavier-than-air flight at that time.
     
  8. Frank

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    For the record I edited before this post. And I love the anger.
     
  9. StayFrosty

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    I only had one "camp" experience growing up. My parents were pretty wary to spend money on social activities for me after I had a poor showing playing soccer at the local YMCA. Of course, being seven years old and having asthma that required me to breathe through a machine 40 minutes a day might have been the cause of that, but I'm sure they were right in telling me I was lazy and didn't care.

    Moving back onto topic, in eighth grade my rural bumfuck Christian school sent our grade to some Bible camp in another rural bumfuck area two hours away. We could have gone anywhere to be surrounded by trees and corn, but apparently spiritual enlightenment called for a long drive.

    Other than a few hours of specialized activity a day, we had a daily schedule that was perfectly tailored to ensure we didn't have time to do anything silly like come up with our own ideas for fun. Oh no, every hour of this week had been planned to maximize our Jesus finding.

    Wake-up call was seven am. Shower, get dressed, go sit down for twenty minutes of lecture and prayer before eating. Immediately after eating, we had an hour of chapel. Then we prayed. Then there were hikes, lectures, hikes, and whatever else they came up with. I've tried to block most of it out, most of what I remember was just being bored and annoyed. Being surrounded by two-faced people who believed in speaking in tongues and judging others without basis was bad enough, but this was the one week of the year I couldn't even go home and sleep in my own bed.

    We were separated into rooms with four beds each, one of which was occupied by an older student who was held accountable to make sure we didn't step out of line. Meaning, 6 PM was prayer, dinner, more chapel, then sit in our rooms quietly. Fucking waste of money and time. There were no fat kids to laugh at, no girls to chase, fuck we barely saw the female classmates the whole week.

    In short, fuck private religious education.
     
  10. travdiddy84

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    What, I'm the only person to think of being a Jewish kid in the 1930s going to a camp with friends and family and chuckling to myself? You people are seriously slipping.
     
  11. Captain Apathy

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    I went to two camps for five years apiece. The first was Camp Tecumseh in Indiana. VERY religious YMCA camp. We would have chapel every morning, grace before meal, and devotions in the cabin before lights out. After my first year- age 9- I started thinking a prayer to myself before I went to bed. I stopped a few years later when I realized I was only doing it as insurance against any vengeful deities. But it was still a fun camp, and the counselors were great.

    I started going to Camp Manitowish in the North Woods of Wisconsin the summer after sixth grade. It was an adventure camp where everyone went on a canoe, kayak or backpacking trip for a good chunk of the time you were there. It was also a YMCA, but much less religious. Most of the counselors were huge stoners who invariably played guitar. When I was 15 I went on a two week backpacking trip in Isle Royale National Park, and the following year I went on a two week canoe trip in Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario (my first visit to the Great White North). Both of those trips are among my fondest memories of my teenage years.
     
  12. dubyu tee eff

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    Thinks he has a chance with Christina Hendricks...

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    Don't beat yourself up over it, man. Keep in mind, all of his accomplishments were for the CANADIAN military. BAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
     
  13. Nettdata

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  14. jordan_paul

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    I went to winter camp once while I was in grade 8. Day 2 I managed to break my foot in 4 places. Good times.
     
  15. Durbanite

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    I already mentioned in the parental embarrassment thread that I was involved in Scouts for a few years. There were a number of camps that we went on. They all sucked.

    Far worse, however, was the one that my school (all guys, no females) forced EVERY student to go on (or you could sit in 3 days in-school detention) - Spirit Of Adventure. You might be thinking "Awesome! 3 days of no school!", but, trust me, it was awful. It was supposed to be a leadership course, so it was mostly 3 days out of school but in school, if that makes sense. The first year I went (1995) was a near-total shitshow. It was supposed to be three days, but ended up being 2 days (remember, during school term) - EVERYONE (except me. HA!) got food poisoning so the course was cut short. I happened to see the incompetent kitchen staff preparing rolls for lunch one day between classes and noticed they were preparing them OUTSIDE and leaving rolls with COLD MEAT on them in the SUN. How did people NOT expect to get sick eating that?

    In between the lectures, which were mostly awful, 2 hour-long snoozefests, where you could actually get detention at school for getting caught sleeping during it, there was lots of strenuous physical activity, like rock climbing, abseiling, and constant hikes - none of which is great for an overweight kid with asthma. So, 90% of the time, I felt like absolute ass. Not fun. Oh, did I mention our class teachers were there, too? Also fun times.

    The second year (1996) it just rained for three days solid. Two of the buildings they used for lectures flooded out, as did much of the sleeping quarters. I had a bit more fun on this trip, since you could now kayak around the dam where this camp was situated. However, the biggest minus of the trip was that I HAD to abseil this time, off a rock face AND then off a dam wall. I declined both, since I am pretty fearful of heights (still am, now) and received detention at school. There were still the boring-ass lectures, though, but the one lecture given by a game ranger on wildlife for 2 hours was pretty interesting.

    The third year (1997) I decided to take the in-school detention instead (since I was bound to get it anyway) and was bounced around between various different teachers who assigned me work. For me, it was better than nearly killing myself on 4 mile hikes. The last 2 years of school, the course was optional - I obviously declined to go.
     
  16. dubyu tee eff

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    My parents never let me go to camp, and I have no idea why. Almost all the kids in my town used to go so, of course, I wanted to go too. I guess my parents were worried about the white man corrupting my young brain or something. It sucked because everyone would be at camp and I'd be home with nothing to do. I guess the benefit is that I spent a lot of that time reading and I think it was those summers that led to my interest in reading non-fiction, so I guess my parents were proven right after all. Who knows, I still wish I had some of the fun memories ya'll do.
     
  17. Racer-X

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    I went to several camps growing up; Cub Scout camp, Boy Scout camp and church camp. They were all fun. Boy Scout camp mostly involved wandering into the mountains and setting stuff on fire. The only thing I specifically remember about Cub Scout camp is some kid slipping and sticking his knife through his hand during the knife safety lecture. I was rejected by a girl for the first time at church camp. I was probably 11 or 12 years old. I asked this girl to go with me to the end of camp banquet. She said she'd think about it and then sent her friend to tell me she didn't want to go with me. I assume she was a lesbian because she wore boots with her dresses (why else would she turn me down?).
     
  18. theillest

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    Most of the summer camps around were run by the church, and I would have none of that given I told my parents I don't believe in god when I was maybe 8? 9?

    I did go to Jazz camp when I was 14 or something on a scholarship I'd won. Learned a lot, had some great instructors, but it was a full schedule from 5 am till 9 pm, and very few girls, so there was no hanky-panky going down as far as I know.

    I never got to have that early adolescent "discover sexuality" camp experience. Living in the city, I didn't know many kids that went to camp, really. There were a few, but usually they came from ultra-religious families, and a lot of my friends were the kids of 1st gen. immigrants, so camp was just not a part of their culture.

    As my best friend said to me, "Black people don't do camp."
     
  19. Juice

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    I went to a sleep away camp when I was 11 for 2 weeks. It was close to home, but just far enough where I felt free from my parents for the first time. What started as an exciting place to meet new friends and learn some skills turned into the first experience where I learned just how fucked up other people were outside of my bubble my parents had kept me in.

    In our cabin, there was about 10 other boys about 11 or 12 as well. Along with that, there was a CIT (about 15 years old) and a junior counselor and a senior counselor, about 18 and 19 years old. There was about 150 campers total. The first week started off innocent enough, fishing, canoeing, kickball, the normal camp activities that fit in a basic schedule to keep you busy throughout the day. After lunch, we took part in "Siesta," which basically you have to take a nap for 45 minutes before the afternoon's activities begin (If it sounds bizarre, its because it is, more on that later). Between activities, everyone either played ping-pong, 4 square, debating on whether to talk to girls, or any other miscellany. After dinner, the counselors usually put on a skit or a PG-rated comedy show for the campers.

    Sounds like fun right? Well buckle up.

    This is written from my perspective as an 11 year old.

    -------

    Day: 2: Counselor Guiseppe (shockingly not a pseudonym) borrows my new Duncan yo-yo and says hell give it back to me soon. He proceeds to snap the campers in his cabin on the back of the leg with it.

    Night 4: Senior counselor Donny, junior counselor Kate, and junior counselor Shawn, "sniffing something" in the kitchen of the great hall during the camp dance.

    Day 6: Donny wakes early and sneaks into a neighboring cabin, takes another counselor's toiletrie bag outside, pee in it, and carefully put it back with our entire cabin as witnesses.

    Night 7: Shawn and junior counselor Anna are outside on the porch smoking from a pipe with "smoke that smells weird"

    Night 9: On the camping trip, Donny, Shawn, senior counselor Johnny A, and Kate are drinking from a milk carton in one of the tents and laughing really loud. Johnny A stumbles out of the tent in his underwear and start kissing rocks and telling the trees that he loves them. Donny then trips over a sleeping camper and other counselors quickly shuffle him away into a random tent, telling the campers that "Hes just really, really tired." Camper Cerano (he was black) sleep walks into a tree and nearly plucks his eye out. The counselors diagnose him as being fine and deem him not in need of a hospital trip but a good night sleep back in the cabin. Counselor-in-Training T.J. escorts him.

    Day 10: While campers are playing 4-square outside before dinner, counselor Kate yells out from the staff house that shes "about to have a menage-a-trois" with Donny and another nameless counselor.

    Night 11: Camp Directors Dan and Jon announce to the camp that they are leaving for other (read: real) jobs. Campers are apathetic while CITs and Counselors all cry and console each other afterwards. (I dont to this day, understand why)

    Day 13: Giuseppe reluctantly gives back my yo-yo and calls me a crybaby for wanting it back.

    Day 14: My mom picked me up and I was never so happy.

    ------

    When I was that age, I didnt really put a lot of the clues together. Now looking back and writing it out, I shudder that these people were in charge of child supervision for 2 weeks.