Camp

Summer Camp was a great time in my life. I went to two different ones of note. The first, chronologically, was TIC Computer Camp in DC. Yes, I went to computer camp. But this was back in the day before computer camp was that nerdy. Or maybe not. Either way, it was only computers for half of the day and sports for the other half. Since I am sitting in law school right now and not a dot com millionaire, I'll let you guess which half of the day I was better at.

TIC was where I began my lifelong love/hate relationship with the Apple company. I'm not sure why we decided that programming on Apples was the way to go, but that's what I ended up doing for something like 8 summers in a row. I learned Logo (the easiest language to program in (maybe)) and then Basic (which, as I remember was pretty easy as well). Then, after about my 4th year, I just stopped progressing with the computer languages and stuck with Basic. I don't remember why, but it probably had something to do with my clinical laziness.

On to sports at computer camp. When I look back on the people who went to this camp, I get pretty pissed off that I did not win more sports awards. This probably had to do more with my low profile than my athletic prowess, as some of these kids were borderline physically retarded. In all the years I went to this camp, the only awards I ever got were the sportsmanship award and the award for best softball player (my last year there). I think I may have won just as many awards for my computer programming (which I spent as little time on as possible). Oh well, at least I got to make fun of a bunch of nerds for the first half of the summer every year.

That brings me to the second half of the summer. I went to sleep-away camp in West Virginia. At this camp, which was mostly for coed jewish kids from MD, PA, FL, NJ, and other assorted places, we spent the whole day playing various sports and the nights doing some sort of "evening activity." These ranged from MTV Night, the grudge match, the bunkmate game (based on the newlywed game), socials (which were just dances), amongst others that I can't remember now. Its funny that this camp was in West Virginia, not only for the obligatory West Virginia jokes, but also because as I look back, it really was almost heaven. That John Denver was not full of shit. Sleep away camp and college were probably as close to heaven as I have gotten in my life (is it a coincidence that I was away from my parents for both?). What follows is a list of my favorite things about camp.

One great night was Cabin Night. Every Wednesday, your cabin, along with a corresponding girls cabin, would grill hamburgers and hot dogs and then make smores in some outdoor location. The lake was always a good one. Essentially, this was an opportunity to hang out with the girls your age while giving the cooks the night off. I don't really remember anything great happening during cabin nights, but anytime I get to hang out with girls and grill hamburgers, its always a good time.


The Friendship Fire. The first night of camp, we would all go down to the lake after dinner and have a friendship fire. Every tent group (we lived in tents [they were better than they sound]) would have some skit prepared about friendship. Normally, these were pretty stupid. The best one ever was by the kids who were a year younger than me. They had the nerdiest kid in their group dress up even nerdier and wear Rec-Specs (by the way, weren't Rec-Specs awesome?) and do the "I am a nerd" speech from the end of Revenge of the Nerds. Genius.

After the skits, people would tell ghost stories or something, always started by the camp director telling "The Brown Hand." It was some story about his uncle having a brown hand in his laBORatory (as Jerry would say) and some ghost of an indian wanted it back. Once the director left, counselors would tell their ghost stories and then we'd go back up to camp.

Sports. Anyway, at this camp, most of the kids were better at sports than the TIC kids (most even played on some high school team), which is not saying much, but ironically, this camp is where I blossomed into the mediocre at every sport athlete that I am today. In the 4 years at the upper-level camp I won a ton of awards, including:
2-time boys leagues champion,
Sunday Night Football champion,
winner of the dunk contest (8 foot rims),
all-Sunday Night Football first team,
all-boys leagues first team,
#1 pick in the boys leagues draft,
#1 pick in the Sunday Night Football draft
2nd to last to pick as a captain of boys leagues team (based on reverse order of athleticism),
#1 and #3 most goals in a water polo game (21 and 19 respectively),
gold feather in ultimate frisbee,
usual member of various camp all star teams (to play other camps) including basketball, softball, soccer, and hockey,
probably the most points in a Boys leagues basketball (championship) game (43),
Jedi Knighthood (seeing if you're paying attention),
and induction into the athletic hall of fame.
I'm not saying I was the best athlete in any one sport that the camp has ever seen, but if they held a vote for best all-around athlete, I'd be at or near the top of the list (in my own mind at least).

Girls. Sleep away camp was also a great place for the girls. When you are forced to spend time with people for four weeks, they tend to make relationships (or whatever they should be called when you are young) progress faster. This meant that my normal strategy of sitting back and waiting for girls to show some sort of interest in me actually worked at camp because if they didn't act fast, summer would be over. Of course, it was always a crap shoot as to whether there would be any hot girls at camp from year to year, but rarely was I disappointed. Needless to say, I always did a lot better for myself at camp than at school (and the girls were better looking, too.)

Random West Virginia (and Virginia) trips. This would usually consist of Trout Pond, Capon Lake, the Tastee-Freez, the Winchester Royals game, and Apple Blossom Mall. Trout Pond and Capon Lake were all-camp trips where we would go swimming and cook out at these places. Tastee-Freez was a knock-off Dairy Queen and was the special reward when you won a Boy's leagues or Sunday Night Football championship. When I went first session, we'd go to the Winchester Royals game (a college summer baseball league) for the 4th of July. Finally, the Apple Blossom Mall was another all-camp trip, where we got to go to a mall and was incidentally where I got my ear pierced for the first time.

Ocean City. When you were a CIT, you got to go to Ocean City for a few days. Despite being like 12 hours away (probably like 8, but still), this was the best trip ever and a great tradition. I actually got to go to OC 2 years in a row because I was the counselor for the CITs the year after I was a CIT. Due to a last minute bout of craziness by the guy counselor who was supposed to go, Catheter Man got the call. The second year was probably more fun than the first, probably due, in no small part, to the fact that the other guy counselor with us turned one of the bathtubs into a beer cooler.

Arthur, Dog, and meal-time games. These were our cooks at camp. Arthur was an obese black guy with coke-bottle glasses and Dog was a scruffy looking, weathered redneck with a crazy limp. Counselors would always make up stories about how Dog got the limp (and his nickname). My favorite story was that when the camp owner came to buy the land, Dog was living there and he would not leave, so they sicced a dog on him and it gnarled his leg. The director felt bad, so he gave him a job as a cook.

Anyway, the food was typical camp food, meaning that it was perfect for a teenage boy. Plus, it was all you can eat every meal. I think I ate 7 grilled cheeses at lunch one time. Even with my daily gluttony, I would still lose weight at camp because I was exercising all day.

Another fun thing about meal time at camp was the way in which counselors would decide who cleaned the table and refilled the pitchers. Announcements were usually made before the meal started and the order in which people went to get food was rotated through the groups (with the administrators/nurse/doctor always going first). So, since we could leave the meal as soon as we finished, someone had to be designated as the table cleaner for the meal. The most typical way this was done was by playing "Freeze." In this game, at some point in the meal, the counselor would call freeze and all of the campers had to stop in whatever pose they were in and not move, hence the name of the game. Whoever moved first had to clean. Usually, counselors would try and get it so that someone was pouring a drink or getting up from the table with one leg in the air or some comparable uncomfortable pose. Even if nobody was posed strangely, they could always make you do something, like hold a full pitcher over your head or something like that. One of my favorites was when a counselor spread mustard under one guy's nose, causing him to dry heave and lose the game.

The other game that made meal time fun was refilling the pitchers. We typically had a pitcher of water and another pitcher of "bug juice" at the table for everyone to use. There were a variety of methods to see who would refill them when they were finished, but two stick out in my mind. One was the old finger to the side of the nose game, where the last person to realize that everyone else was doing this would refill. The other was whoever killed it fills it. The great twist about this game was that even if you were the person to kill the pitcher, if the liquid did not get all the way to the line on the cup (near the rim), the person who filled their cup before you had to refill it. Needless to say, I became an expert on judging how much I should fill up my cup if the pitcher was getting low.

Colorwar. I never really gave a crap about colorwar, but its worth mentioning. This was where the whole camp was divided into two teams and you would compete in various areas. This included sports, silent meals (where you would get points taken off if anyone spoke), the apache relay (the only enjoyable colorwar event), and a song. The counselors would always try and "break" colorwar in some new and unusual way, but again, I couldn't have cared less.

KD For those of you who didn't go to camp (or at least my camp, KD stands for Kings Dominion. This is an amusement park in Virginia where they had some of the best roller coasters on the east coast. The Shock Wave, the Grizzly, the Rebel Yell, the Anaconda, the Hurler, and even the Scooby Doo were great in their heyday. What happened on KD (as it was known around camp was: everyone woke up at the buttcrack of dawn and boarded these charter busses. We drove from High View, WVA to wherever KD is ( for directions) and this took about 4 hours (from what I can remember). This included a pit stop for lunch at some random rest area (where nobody would really eat lunch because would you rather have a soggy sandwich or hot pizza at the park?).

Once we finally got to the park, it was like a free for all. I think every group had to have a counselor, so this usually meant that you would be with your group of friends and your favorite counselor... pretty sweet). Then you would commence with the roller coasters and other puke-inducing rides, all the while not forgetting to load up on fried and sugary foods. Good times. Good times, indeed.

On a side note, by the time I was a CIT, I had collected a KD nametag (Max) and could put together what looked like a reasonably accurate KD uniform. This was a blue hat, cream-colored polo shirt, nametag, and blue shorts. I took a couple of kids through the lines, pretending one of them was a Make-A-Wish foundation kid so that we would not have to wait to go on rides. One of the people who worked there got pissed at me for some reason and asked where I worked and I told him at the Sno-Cone stand (even though they didn't sell Sno-Cones there). After we got out of there, I decided it wasn't a good idea to impersonate park employees anymore.

Initiation. Initiation was pretty damn cool. I think it was always the second to last night of camp. All the guys would wear a towel as pants and get all painted up like Indians (feathers, not dots). People would be stationed at various points on the road from the cabins to the initiation site (in the woods behind the upper soccer field). We would have giant cans with flaming rolls of toilet paper in them to light the way. When initiation began, all the first year campers were led up this road in the night to the initiation site. For intimidation purposes, we would shout, "SILENCE!" at those who were talking.

At the initiation site, the camp director was there in a full headdress. He told some indian story and a huge bonfire was lit via a flaming arrow (strung up to make sure it went into and lit the fire). Then there was some story about a snake and some of the already initiated would do a snake dance. Then the director's son would do the flaming hoop dance. After that, there was a story about the indian prince and princess. I don't really remember any of it, but at some point, the princess would scream and run into the woods. Then the prince would run after her, grab an effigy, and throw her into the bonfire. I remember it was a huge honor to be the prince, and got to be the prince when I was a CIT. I also managed to throw the princess into the bonfire on the first try, no small feat.

After all of this, the initiates would walk around some path and get a cup of unsweetened iced tea and get their face painted. They were thus initiated. There was some sentence that the director would always use to end the ceremony. Once everyone heard that last word, all the guys would rip off their towels and streak all the way to the pool and jump in. This part was obviously not sanctioned by the camp, but they never really tried to prevent it.

Banquet. The Banquet was the last night of camp. We would all get "dressed up," which really meant khakis and a polo shirt or something like that and have a "nice dinner." People would take pictures of everyone before this dinner because 1) we were all clean-looking and 2) this was the last time you would have a chance to take a picture with anyone. We'd also get to have Mickey Mouse ice cream pops for dessert. This was also the time when the gold feathers, plaques, and athletic hall of fame inductees were presented.

Gold Feathers were for the best person at any given activity. If you were the best at archery, you would get a gold feather. Best at arts and crafts --- gold feather. For some reason, there was only a general "athletics" gold feather instead of individual sports. Ironically, despite my many athletic achievements at camp (and self-professed mediocrity at everything), my only gold feather in 7 years of being a camper was my CIT year... in ultimate frisbee. And I only got it because I was good friends with the counselor who taught it and he couldn't believe I had never gotten a gold feather in anything. Plus, I was a pretty damn mediocre ultimate frisbee player.

Plaques were slabs of wood about the size of a laptop screen that each tent group painted to represent their group. You would have some sort of theme and each camper and counselor's name on the plaque along with a nickname usually. I don't really remember any of our plaques. All the plaques are hung up on the rafters in the dining hall, so you can see everyone who has gone to the camp since it opened.

The Athletic Hall of fame is just what it sounds like. You can get in any year, but most people don't make it at all. Rumor had it that I was close to making it my junior year (it went: Dormie, Junior, Senior, CIT) until I screwed up the half-field soccer shots during the apache relay. I was inducted my Senior year. Usually about 2 or 3 people a year got in.

After banquet, we'd all go out to the baseball field and they would light the year on fire (i.e., '94), spelled out in maxi pads doused in gasoline on a chain link lacrosse goal. I couldn't make that one up. We would all stand around in a circle and sing some camp songs and everyone would be sad to leave the next day.

Camp Mix Tapes. By the end of the summer, there would always be certain songs that you heard all throughout camp, either on the radio (Froggy 99.3 and WINC fm 92.5) or at the socials. All these songs would invariably get put onto your Camp Mix Tape. These were always great mixes and to this day, when I hear a song that was on one of the Camp Mixes, I always think about camp.

Well, those are all the camp memories I can list for now. If you have some, feel free to post them in the Comments section.

everywhere we go-o, people wanna know-o... who we a-are, so we tell them...