Youth Camp '06

Okay okay okay!! I'm posting. Since I have had multiple people ask me to post this, that means that theoretically I can make this as long as I want and you will still read it, right??? Hehehe... I'll try and be nice and keep it manageable!

So, youth camp... I was counselor to the 4th grade girls with Lindsey as my co-counselor/kitchen help (mainly kitchen help). My week basically consisted of dealing with little girl sagas over and over and over and over and over... you get my drift! I had a total of 5 girls, 3 of which had recently graduated from the Primary department in Seattle, so I already knew them EXTREMELY well. Dynamics in my cabin were interesting, in that one of the girls was bossy and a know-it-all and she would try to boss the other girls around so none of them wanted to be with her. She would then come to me and say that the other girls were being mean and ignoring her, conveniently forgetting to tell me about how she had been bossing them around. Needless to say, by the end of the week whenever someone would come to tattle to me, my first question was always "What did you do to them first?" and then, being the cold-hearted person that I am, I would say that they probably deserved whatever ill they were currently bemoaning. *Insert here that I DID pay attention if it was something serious, I'm not THAT dumb!*


Getting them to go to sleep was insanely hard, especially for one girl. The first night, I honestly am not sure if she slept at all. To make matters worse, our cabin had new, super crinkly mattresses, so that whenever you even moved everyone else could hear it. This girl laid on her top bunk and everytime she rolled over she would give a little bounce, you know like you would do when you were little and trying to bounce in your bed, that, coupled with the squeaky mattress and our cabin, which was like 80 degrees, I barely slept the first night. By the third night, I had managed to track down some "Adventures in Odyssey" which didn't put them right to sleep, but at least meant that they had to be quiet so that they could listen to the story. I also told noisy-non-sleep-girl that if she kept making noise when I had asked her to stop and go to sleep, I was going to make her sleep on the concrete floor with no mattress.

It was insanely hot in our cabin, which would have been a good thing, except that we all had sleeping bags and were prepared for the cold. What's that you say? Turn down the heat? No way.. the thermostat was in a little box that was screwed to the wall with no opening whatsoever... I finally had to get my dad to unscrew it so we could get the cabin comfortable to be in. The cabin also had showers in it, which was a blessing, except that in the morning my girls would lay in bed and call "first shower" but they wouldn't get up and take it. I explained that I didn't care who called "first shower" but whoever actually got their butt up and went and TOOK it got the first shower. (See, wasn't I just so mean!?!) They also took like 3 showers a day, which I wouldn't have minded, except that they always yelled at me to get out cause I was "taking too long" because they all needed to take their third shower of the day. (Just for the record, 10 minutes isn't too long and I, as a counselor, can take as long of a shower as I want and also invite any of my fellow counselors to utilize our much nicer showers if I choose... both were concepts lost on my girls).

One of my girls (the bossy one) kept complaining that she wasn't having any fun... hmm, I wonder why... but she told me the only fun thing she had done at camp was floss cause flossing was her favorite thing to do. This is the same girl whose flip-flop broke so she left it sitting in the gravel parking lot and kept on running. When she came back for it an hour later, Bro. Joe and Bro. Chet had cut off the bottom half (because it was broken, duh!!) and used it to help hold the pressure on the bottle-rocket launcher. When she found out, boy was she mad... nevermind the fact that she had abandoned it in the parking lot... no no no, they CUT her flip-flop!!!! ... said the drama queen.

Another great problem of the week were the slugs. My girls HATED slugs, so they found these two slugs that they thought looked like they were mating. Were they actually? I have no idea, I don't know much about slugs myself, but they didn't want "baby slugs" so they broke them up. I thought it was pretty hilarious. Needless to say, my cabin was fairly intense. By the end of the week, someone came up to me and was like, "Good thing camp ends today, cause you may need a straightjacket if it were to go on any longer." I still am not sure if she intended the straightjacket for me or for my girls.


I also had a screamer in my cabin. She screamed when she was happy, she screamed when she was mad, she screamed when she was excited, she probably would have screamed when she was sad too, but I don't know for sure. This was blood-curdling, heart-stopping, someone-MUST-have-just-fallen-over-dead-to-warrant-this-kind-of-scream screaming. It finally got so bad during the middle of the week that I announced to the cabin in general that if I heard any more screaming of the previously described variety, unless there was blood involved, I was going to take away their concession card for one concession time. That made her stop screaming =).

And did I mention the great exploding suitcases? Each morning I would be the drill sergeant and make my girls clean up the cabin for inspection. By 1 in the afternoon, each and every girl's bag would have exploded all over the floor yet again. I kept telling them that clean up would be easier if they kept their clothing in their suitcases, but no, why would you believe me? I've only been to youth camp going on 15 times now. This pile, coupled with the rocks they collected from the beach (complete with sand!), left over drawings and wet/stinky towels that they NEVER hung up, was enough to drive me insane. A couple of times I stopped to ask myself if I was getting frustrated by this because I was 21 and they were 9, but then I came to the conclusion that no, my 4th grade self would have been mad at her cabin mates if they were doing this as well. I guess that is the price I pay for being anal. Although I don't call not wanting my pillow to be grabbed from my bed and thrown in a dirty pile on the floor to provide a "safe landing" should their jumping from bunk to bunk go awry being anal. I call that being normal. Once I figured out what they were doing, I quickly put a stop to it, but I think that those sneaky little girls did it even after I told them to stop. I wouldn't know for sure because unlike them, I don't particularly enjoy hanging out in my cabin when there are things to do outside. How did I guess? I walked in one day and my pillow was yet again missing. I checked the mass pile of junk on the floor, located said pillow and noticed a row of dirty little toe prints on my white pillow case. I just sighed, turned the pillow over and put it back on my bed, figuring there wasn't much that I could do about my now dirty pillow case.
Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy myself and had a good time... it was just one of the more memorable youth camps. And I'm assuming that my girls didn't hate me even though I was "mean", seeing as how on the last day as they were getting ready to leave, they kept running at me full tilt from across the fielding and almost toppling me over with their hugs. *sigh* Yup... youth camp sure is fun! =)