Confessions of a Band Camp Geek

Then When you graduate,
Ya take a look around and you say "Hey Wait!"
This is the same as where I just came from,
I thought it was over, Aw that's just great.

-Bowling For Soup "High school Never Ends"

Prologue: Not a Happy Camper

Have you ever been to sleep away camp? If not, here is my advice to you, the golden rule:

STAY AWAY!

Sure, they make it sound fun with the thought of being away from your parents, fun activities, good food, and the things like cabin rivalries that are supposed to be friendly. Well I'm going to stop your happy train of thought right now because all that? Yeah, it's bullshit.

One thing the camp brochures forgot to mention is the amount of walking you have to endure. If I knew I had to walk through a thick forest for ten minutes with nothing but a flashlight to get to a bonfire being held on a tiny island in the middle of the lake, do you think I'd be here? No! And then just to get to my cabin I had to walk a frickin' mile, pushing a ten ton trunk! Tell me, does that sound like fun to you? I didn't think so.

Another thing I have to point out is that the escaping your parents thing is a lie. Yeah, your biological parents aren't here telling you what to do—they're partying in frickin' Hawaii—but you have counselors and they might as well be your parents. The counselors punish you when you break the 'law', give you a curfew, and 'ground' you when you sneak out. At least my mom had the sympathy all mothers seem to carry around with them; these people don't give a damn if you're suffering from withdrawal. You do the crime, you pay the time.

Now, about the whole good food tidbit? They're right; the food is just a centimeter short from heaven. They just forgot to mention the fact that if you get in trouble, you're put on kitchen duty. Then if you screw up and burn something or add in a wrong ingredient, you have to eat it. Isn't that a bit of cruel and unusual punishment!? And if you screw up the food too many times, they put you on dish duty and nothing seems heavenly when you have to clean the fifty trillion dishes the camp uses.

Yeah, that 'friendly' cabin rivalries thing is a lie. It's just the title the camp gives them to cover up the true bitchiness of it all. It's a propaganda technique they use to make you think you can pull some risky pranks and it's all for fun, but it's just bullshit. Nothing is friendly about walking up to find your undergarments on display for the entire camp's enjoyment. Friendly rivalry my ass.

And now to drop the big bomb.

Camp. Is. Like. School.

Don't gasp and give me that shocked look or accuse me of being a pessimist. I'm just telling you like it is. You still have to get up at a certain time so you can't sleep in, you have a curfew because you've got 'school' the next morning, those 'fun' activities are your classes, and the 'fun' activity instructors are your teachers.

And that's not all, there's still the ultra bitch, dickhead, cliques, crushes, evil 'teachers', and there is still the chance of getting lock down or as I like to call it, detention. These People just round up all the horrors of high school and throw it into a summer camp, but what's worse is you don't even have the weekends off. If they added that in the brochure you'd keep your happy butt home.

So, being the nice person I am, I'm giving you all a warning of what camp really is and not the sugar coated bull they throw on a flyer to trick you. What that is, is just a form of propaganda to snatch away your money. I'm coming to you with the truth.

But hey, if you want to toss all my words of wisdom out the window and hop on a bus to a 'fun filled' summer, got ahead. I'm not stopping you. For all I know, maybe you do like hiking through the forest, smacking away mosquitoes, having 'friendly' rivalries, and continuing your high school days into summer. Maybe you are a morning person who doesn't mind getting up early or a person who isn't going to do anything stupid to get them kitchen duty. Maybe you're capable of seeing all the good this summer camp offered you.

I'm not. I'm not one of those happy campers who can just smile 24/7 because of the feeling of being in the 'fresh air'. And it's not because I'm a pessimist either, I just see the truth in places like these. They aren't happy places.

But go on, ignore my advice of what really awaits on those grounds. Go on and hop on that bus thinking you're going to a place where joy and sing-alongs exist. Just make sure it's a bus with A/C.

This is Higurashi Kagome and you. Have. Been. Warned.

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