Girl's Camp: An Unlucky Endeavor

I was just unlucky at camp. I honestly think Murphy's Law should be renamed Deborah's Law. Everything that could've possibly gone wrong happened. But it was also the best year I've had at camp. Here are just a few of the "highlights" of camp. 


The falling cot incident
Before I get into the details of the event, you need to know what the tent was like. It was a platform tent, meaning it's a tent set on a platform about 2 feet above the ground. There were ropes keeping the walls of the tent in place, but the bottom was free to float wherever it wanted, rarely even brushing against the platform. Now it's time for an excerpt from my journal, written a day after the incident:

"It had been a long day for all of us. We'd all gotten up at sometime before 7, and were still adjusting to nature. I was in the minority without mosquito netting, erasing a whole extra step from climbing into my cot, so I just gently plopped down on my cot, starting to lie down, and the next thing I knew I was on the cold, wet ground. I heard voices inside the tent asking were I went and if I was okay. I slowly stood up and answered them, saying I was fine. Feeling dazed, I lifted the cot--which had collapsed and folded itself neatly beside me--back into the tent. I tried explaining what happened, but I couldn't think. Everything felt hazy, artificial, like a dream. I pulled the cot at least a foot away from the wall to avoid such an accident from ever happening again. I lay down with extreme caution and didn't move a muscle. I was just hoping that when I'd wake up it would be back at home in my warm bed, starting the day over again. Maybe that wasn't the best thought to go to sleep with because I dreamt I was sitting on my bed at home, and it collapsed and fell through the window. And if that wasn't enough, it was freezing, and all I'd brought was a lightweight blanket, so I ended up suffocating myself in my sheet and pillow as well until 6AM."

Once I was home I was looking up some random things and found out that I probably suffered a minor concussion as well. I suffered most of the symptoms listed on WebMD except vomiting, memory loss, and loss of consciousness, and most just mildly. But for the rest of the week I had a headache and was extra dizzy and easily lost focus.

Food Everywhere
I didn't like the food and the food didn't like me. Everything involving food got messed up in some way or another. Most days I just didn't like the food, and so skipped most of it and just grabbed an unripe apple to keep from passing out later on. It probably didn't help that I couldn't eat any eggs without throwing up and I'd recently developed lactose intolerance, and so got very little dairy. Some days my sandwich buns would fall on the floor, and some days (actually the same day) my corn cob would be covered in ranch dressing and ketchup. When we made banana boats, my foil had a tiny hole that managed to leak burned chocolate banana juice all over my shirt. When we made foil dinners, Most of mine burned and my chicken and potatoes were all shriveled and dry. And on our drive home I somehow ate my chicken sandwich without realizing it, despite the fact that I wasn't hungry at all and I normally eat really slowly, but then on the whole ride home I was really hungry.

Bathroom Troubles
The bathrooms sucked. A lot. There wasn't much water pressure at all, so half the time the toilets didn't flush. The sinks were designed for 4 foot high cub scouts, not 5'9 teenage girls, and so whenever I finished washing my hands, my pant legs would be soaked. The showers. Oh, the showers. They were pretty horrible. Like I said, there was no water pressure, and so the showers were like a very light sprinkling of rain, only boiling hot because there was no way to adjust the temperature. And most of them weren't cleaned, especially the handicapped ones. I always ended up with the handicapped one because all the others had been claimed, and I can tell you, they weren't pleasant. The curtains were covered in mold and mildew and dead bugs. The floor of one had a giant puddle of blue stuff (probably shampoo) attracting hundreds of bugs. I forgot to bring shower shoes, and so I had the pleasure of having those hundreds of bugs crawling over my feet. Talk about encouragement to hurry up in the shower! But then I had to get dressed in clothes that had gotten wet from all the steam, and so they took twice as long to put on.

Weird Tan Lines
I got kind of random sunburns. My arms never burned too badly, and they quickly faded to freckles and a tan. My legs, on the other hand, got burned really badly the day that we went to the pool to stick our feet in. The day we decided to do that is the day that I'd decided to wear really heavy jeans, and so I rolled them up to just below my knees and stuck my feet in. It felt amazing at the time, but I wasn't thinking about my legs at all. While the majority of the time they were immersed, they still managed to get burned, especially the part directly below my knee, which never touched the water. The next day they were a deep purple. And speaking of deep purple, guess what color my neck was? Despite the fact that I applied sunscreen there at least 10 times a day, I still got a reddish/purplish/brownish burn there which is flaking off as I type. It made sleeping really uncomfortable, because I couldn't lay flat at all without squishing it in some way.

Ropes Course
My very least favorite part of camp was the ropes course which had a fancy acronym name. It actually involved very little rope, and luckily most of my groups activities stayed on the ground. It was all about building trust, which I've never been good at. I've grown very independent when it comes to physical things. I don't like having people help me at all, and I could pretty easily survive living on my own, so these things were kind of hard for me. Even just falling backwards and having someone catch me was really hard, although I was larger than all the other girls in my group, giving me good reason to worry. But I finally managed to do it. I also balanced on a swinging log, got lifted several feet off the ground, and walked across a wire floating a foot off the ground with nothing to hold on to but a rope above my head (although, I did fall and punch myself in the head). Our final obstacle was a wire bridge, situated 50 feet in the air. I knew immediately I wouldn't be able to do it. After waiting until the last moment, I was forced into it. I climbed a little over halfway up the wooden pole, before getting dizzy and almost falling. Instead of feeling accomplished and proud of myself after finishing most of the obstacles, I was embarrassed and could think of nothing better to do than rolling up into a ball and crying. But I survived, and remained with a bruise on my forehead and a strained muscle in my leg.

So there are a handful of the bad things about camp. One of these days I'll list all the great things about camp. It really was my favorite year, I just had to get all the negative things out of the way. And honestly, looking back, I just want to laugh at these things. They're so trivial, and yet they're the things that stuck out in my mind at the moment.