did you attend SUMMER CAMP?

not only did i attend summer camp i just mentioned it in the mad men thread for some reason

this is a big canadian and jewish and especially jewish-canadian thing.

what abt week-long bible study camp which also happens to be a go-away camp in nature?

if so, then yes. did not get laid, but I was like seven.

I went to Boy Scout camp for something like 5 or 6 summers.

Did not get laid.

no way--only child, terrified of my peers

Only did all-girl's teen church camp, which was awful. I am lucky my Mom had the same problems with other camp peers being vicious assholes at church camp when she was a teen, and let slide my decision to stop going when I turned 15. (Her normal reply when I didn't want to do an activity with even a tenuous connection to church: "Isn't that what Satan would want?")

Real summer camp sounds cool but I probably would have been a social outcast due to having been extremely underconfident in my physical skills, eg crying for an hour so I wouldn't be forced to rappel.

I would not cry if someone tries to make me rappel now but the thought still terrifies me.

I attended a day camp that was in nature though not in the woods. I went there every day in the summers from age 4-12 and was then a counselor until I was 17.

http://www.obyg.org/

It was a pretty big part of my life. I didn't get laid though I did make out with a fellow counselor during the counselor camping trip one year.

I was supposed to go to a real sleep away camp in the woods when I was nine but chickened out a week before because I was afraid I'd be homesick. :/ In other words: no way--only child, terrified of my peers

― call all destroyer, Tuesday, May 29, 2012 8:38 PM (42 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i was very much a social outcast haha

that really looked like it said obgyn.org

Summer camp as a teen sounds fun if you're the kind of kid
who does soft drugs
who plays a guitar
who is willing to make out with people
who can rappel without tears

(Her normal reply when I didn't want to do an activity with even a tenuous connection to church: "Isn't that what Satan would want?")

Sorry Abbbottttt, but I lol'd

Nope, watched TV baseball with the AC on.

Here is a pic from my camp! I'm the rugrat on the top row of monkey bars (or whatever) in the ringer tee and big bangs.

http://i.imgur.com/yxKQp.jpg

that really looked like it said obgyn.org

Oh believe me this did not pass us by as we got older.

There's not a "y and I would've gotten laid if we hadn't got caught" option

ENBB it looks like you're wearing a little CBGB shirt

braggin 199x

xp

:D Ha it sorta does! That was our "uniform". It said O.B.Y.G. and had a boat on it. I wish I still had one.

I still remember her as Sarah from Missouri

btw the kid I made out with on the counselor camping trip as a teenager was the kid with the crazy blond afro two to my right :)

this is a big canadian and jewish and especially jewish-canadian thing

haha my handful of jewish-canadian friends totally went and then were counselors

For Better of For Worse of all things made falling in love at summer camp sound like the best teenage love experience (specifically, I am referring to a plot when Michael was an early teen).

e are you thrusting your pelvis at the camera?

o_O

I think I'm leaning backwards and swinging my feet or something. idk.

I did not attend as a camper, but I did work as a day camp counselor one summer. Every afternoon our bus driver played "One More for the Road" on a crappy monophonic cassette player as loud as it would go.

It was the summer between my 8th and 9th grade year of school and it was a church camp with fun summer activities, canoeing, archery, and mild rock climbing. It was near Santa Fe, NM . Sarah from Missouri was the only alternative girl there and we also got busted smoking.

Yes, attended summer camp for two weeks when I was eleven. J3r3my P1ven was one of my counselors. My glasses were broken and taped, so he called me "Einstein."

Piven!!

I made a mental note of his name at the time, and probably still have it scrawled on a revenge list somewhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMo_HcRBnUY

went to various camps in the summer. a day camp when I was about 7. I remember watching saved by the bell and animated batman series after swimming.
went to a middle school band camp at UT-Austin. so awkward, so alone. went to a high school journalism camp in high school. still awkward, still alone (tho less so).

worked at a day camp one summer in college. kinder through 6th grade kiddos. never again.

ugh that should say high school journalism cap at UT-austin again

Aw, I think being a counselor is my favorite job I've ever had.

I went to a summer creative writing program at a college in MA right before my senior year that really was in the woods and was essentially a summer camp for weird teenagers.

Piven!!

― wolf kabob (ENBB), Tuesday, May 29, 2012 8:57 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

I made a mental note of his name at the time, and probably still have it scrawled on a revenge list somewhere.

did it involve 'mercury poisoning'?

lol

I only went to Space Camp on year and I was 10 and did not get laid.

Somehow the concept of summer camp came up the other day and my wife and I were really puzzled why this is such a iconic reference point because absolutely nobody we knew ever did this. Then again we basically grew up in the woods so there would have been no point.

I did go away for a sports related camp once, and other kids I know did similar activities or church based things but never the woods / canoeing / making beaded wallets / counselors / sort of deal.

I went to "writer's camp" one summer in Boise on a scholarship. Once again, it would have been a lot more fun if I were into soft drugs and guitar like all my camp/terrible poet peers were. I was staying at a stranger's house and they put a tent out back so I could have the "camp experience." It was weird. In addition to the tent, the woman and her daughter hosting me had absolutely no food, at least compared to what I was used to (having bowl after bowl of Malt O'Meal generic bagged cereal all afternoon). They did give me a Mazzy Star poster though so that was cool. In retrospect, this doesn't much sound like camp.

they put a tent out back so I could have the "camp experience"

omg

Also I got free tickets to a No Doubt concert; this kind of thing is equally atypical of a camp.

the world needs a graphic novel charting abbbottt's path from mormon child to sui generis adult

(probably said this before but it's true)

seriously

\\\

When I was (a year younger than I should have been) I worked at the Boy Scout camp Laura linked upthread. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. There was this one guy C.A. who'd come into my tent at night -- every night -- and dump a bucket of lakewater on me, because I'd "make a weird noise." Another time I was in the shower and this dude, who was a fourth generation staff member, shat on the floor in front of me and pushed me into it. Also, I once got stoned with a bunch of the senior employees who thought it would be funny to abandon me in the woods without a flashlight. Eventually I complained to the camp director, and he did absolutely nothing. EXCEPT: next week at the staff meeting he called me up and told me he had a special award for me. The award: A trophy with a sprayed-gold shellacked tampon glued to the top and covered in gooey catsup. I was asked to put the award on the floor, straddle it, and everybody chanted some song about "BITCH OF THE WEEK" Trophy.
So fuck Boy Scouts, they're miserable and awful and I hope the organization burns to the fucking ground (and I even did an Eagle Scout project).

― Remy (x Jeremy), Thursday, July 28, 2005 10:38 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh, and I was nicknamed "Black Stallion" because I'd been pushed off teh edge of a bunk onto a metal joist sticking out of a steamer trunk. The joist went up under my knee, and since it was camp I was LIFTED OFF by an older staff member who could pull me vertically in the air. Then he dropped me and told me to 'walk to the health center for stitches, if you need them."
A few days later, when I was on crutches, this kid Aiyut (?) thought it would be funny to rename me "Black and Blue Stallion" so he did, and he accomplished this by grabbing my nipples 2-3 times / day and twisting them until I screamed. This caught on (apparently it's called "toolboxing" and for the rest of the summer my coworkers (all of whom were 2-5 years older than me) would grab me by the front of the shirt and twist so hard that I had a black-and blue chest for +/- 3 months. My nickname by the end of the summer? "Toolbox."

― Remy (x Jeremy), Thursday, July 28, 2005 10:44 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Another time, after I'd spent all night -literally- grading these 70+ papers kids had written for their merit badges (hey! send your kids to camp so they can write fucking papers! summer vacation!) and I was nodding, trying not to fall asleep at the breakfast table in the mess hall. This kid "Thomm" asked me if I wanted to know a trick to stay awake, and I said (naively), Sure! So he gathers arounnd all of the senior staff, most of my coworkers and a lot of the campers, and he says "we're gonna teach Toolbox how to stay awake" and he asked me if I was ready. I said "sure" and he punched me in the face as hard as he could. Drew blood and all. Everybody roared with laughter. And he said "you sure as shit ain't gonna fall asleep no more."
― Remy (x Jeremy), Thursday, July 28, 2005 10:58 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

JFC

wau remy, those are some wacky wickedly sadistic summer camp hijinks!

uh

fuc

never went to camp (except the week long bible-y one). my two best friends went to jewish summer camp every year tho and i always kind of resented them for it because a) i was effectively alone for most of the summer b) they were def having more fun than i was

i went to sleepaway camp (campfire boys and girls) for a few years. i lost interest in it but my sister went on to become a counselor. i also did music camp at UT austin where we stayed in the dorms... which is a sort of wilderness? in college i went several times to an artist's residency/summer art school in the woods to take classes. that was the best one because it's like camp but everyone is older, less awkward, and drunk.

this is a big canadian and jewish and especially jewish-canadian thing.

― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki)

YES.

nope, but my kids will be doing a day camp thing this summer

I attended Space Academy, which was kinda like Space Camp except for secondary school kids. Does that count? Weren't during the summer, tho; Easter vay-cay.

ha I did not know this was a widespread Canadian thing. is that why Camp Caribou ever made it as a tv show?

I went to various camps from around ages 10-13. They were all bible-y but I only recall one of them being pushy about it. They actually got like an evangelical preacher to come and speak for an evening and at the end of his preaching he invited everyone to ~come forward and accept jesus~. The counsellor in my cabin also told us that soap operas are amoral and made us promise not to ever watch them.

i went to YMCA camp age 9 and then a catholic camp ages 10-12. two weeks, sleep away, really enjoyed it. lotsa great memories of running around in the woods, making stupid lanyards, riding decrepit mulish horses, sneaking off the camp grounds and getting lost in a corn field, raiding girls camp.

lolling at the poll options. I spent two summers as a 13 and 14 year old at a music camp in Maine, which was both where I lost my virginity and was first introduced to weed, and those weren't even the highlights. Place was a blast, my first taste of freedom away from my parents as a teenager.

hahaha i missed the poll options. while i didn't "get laid" i kissed a girl for the first time and i liked it.

I attended Space Academy, which was kinda like Space Camp except for secondary school kids. Does that count? Weren't during the summer, tho; Easter vay-cay.

I always wanted to go to Space Academy after Space Camp. Too expensive though, I had to win a scholarship to go the first time. My childhood dreams were crushed after that.

while i didn't "get laid" i kissed a girl for the first time and i liked it.

You should write a song about the experience!

i went to camp in the late 60s, fond memories of the counselors whipping out acoustic guitars and leading us in protest songs around the campfire

several years of Boy Scout camp, including a 10 day hiking expedition at Philmont, plus two years of German camp for high school credit at Waldsee, plus a week of journalism camp which kind of turned into "a week of hanging out at the U of M ordering pizza and roaming Dinkytown" plus a week of ACDA regional honor choir and two weeks of All-State choir (which don't count because those were either at colleges or in hotels)

I want to go to German camp!

i am hardly even understanding how remy's horrific camp experiences were allowed to happen

German camp was SO AWESOME; it was basically a German village built in the woods near a lake and if you were in high school, you could go for a month and do intensive study that would skip you a year ahead in high school. They had other languages too; at the end of the month session, there was a huge International Day when everyone met at either the German camp or the Norwegian camp and had a big day long festival of food, music, dancing and crafts representing all of the camps.

http://www.concordialanguagevillages.org/newsite/

I recommend anyone with kids start saving money now to send them to this because it's seriously life-changing and awesome.

Woah! That sounds really neat.

x-posts Jesus Christ Remy. I didn't even read that until just now. WTF? I mean, seriously. That was all at the same camp during the same summer? That's horrific.

i went to camp for a week or so when i was 12. it was a camp my brother had gone to before because it specialized in diabetes care and they had this week+ open to siblings. so it had a more responsible vibe to it, considering kids could die in more ways than non-diabetic kids could die. it was fine but the days were way too structured, always thing after thing and so many people. i got a lot of mosquito bites, had my period halfway through, felt shy most of the time but was good at sports so mostly just swam and ran around a lot. the location was quite nice, off the west coast of vancouver; we had to take a boat there. i remember it pretty clearly, but i remember anything out of the ordinary pretty clearly.

I never had anything approaching that type of experience at Boy Scout camp, thank god

although a kid in our troop did break someone's arm once

i did not get laid but some other kids and i were giving each other piggy back rides and this guy who liked me got a boner when i was piggy backing him. i ignored it.

uh, obv referring to Remy and not rrrobyn (although it is true that I never started menstruating halfway through camp)

Diabetic camp! My little brother went to one every summer and some winters. I liked the name a lot because it's an anagram of Idaho: HODIA.

http://www.hodia.org/images/navigation/topnav_logo.gif

Remy's camp mates and leaders were fucking unconscionable!

voted "and i got laid" because kissing is basically getting laid when you're 12

remy's stories are so terrifying and horrible: you poor kid.

'summer camp' basically isn't much of a thing in the UK, but the music stuff i did meant i went on a couple of week-long 'summer schools', held in rural boarding schools that were empty for the holidays. One with a children's choir, which i did for like six or seven years running; one with a youth orchestra which i think i only did once or twice. Only a bit of mandatory physical activity, mostly just preparing for an end-of-week concert that all the parents get to come to.

the youth orchestra one involved a certain amount of getting high in the woods, but not much because we were nice middle-class kids and terrrrified of getting caught; the choir one originally involved a lot of sex gossip (a lot of who's-been-caught-in-whose-bed, plus one year there was the story of one wanking competition in the older boys' dorm that became such common currency there were skits about it in the end-of-week variety show thing), though my cohort were pretty chaste.

(nb the end-of-week variety show thing happened the day before the end-of-week concert: there were no wanking-related jokes made in front of parents (except the parents who were present at the camp as 'chaperones') (er))

I went to sleepaway camp many times as a kid (only child, busy parents) and on separate occasions before middle school (but never full summer camp)

* ended up in the infirmary for a whole week because i was covered head to toe in hives. did not make friends, did not get laid.
* slept in a tent with these two girls who didn't know what a possum was, so they kept calling it a monkey and this was the funniest thing i had ever heard. they called me shrimpy. did not get laid.
* went 1 week with friend angela while parents were away for 2 weeks and she told everyone in the cabin that i was a terrible person and that they should hate me, so they did. i made no friends, did not get laid, and then had to spend an additional week at angela's house while she ignored me because i had nowhere else to go.

day camp too? band camp?

Oh man, not summer camp related, but I was hanging out with a Swiss exchange student in high school when she saw her first possum and it was this huge monster of a possum snarling at us in the headlights. She was wide-eyed scared asking me "what the fuck was that? was that real?"

I went to this adventure camp type thing one summer and got my two bottom teeth almost entirely ripped out of my face. Fun.

that does sound like an adventure

I several times went to a hippy British summer camp thing for the kids of lefty bourgeois Londoners but was too young to get laid. Does that count?

I started going to summer camp one week each summer when I was ten and continued until I was fourteen - so, five summers. It was a church-sponsored camp, but it wasn't particularly churchy. We slept in barracks-like cabins full of bunk beds. We had a swimming hole where two creeks met and formed a pool. We sang Kum-By-Yah around the campfire every night. I kid you not.

I always had a good time. I never got laid there, though. :-(

no summer camp bizniss in Australia afaik, except school camps.

I imagine summer camp = the movie Meatballs, so if it's okay I'm picturing all of you that have confirmed you have been to summer camp as 70's california teens with shiny hair

I only went to Space Camp on year and I was 10 and did not get laid.

― Jeff, Tuesday, May 29, 2012 6:29 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I wanted Australia to have space camp SO badly growing up, Jeff I don't care if you didn't get any action you are my hero and I am SUPER JEALOUS. (you too kingfish)

I also wanted to go to Space Camp but that was mostly because of the movie with Joaquin Phoenix when he was still Leaf.

http://www.spacecamp.com/files/jinx.jpg

And because I was a fat kid and thought I'd get to eat a lot of astronaut ice cream.

Which isn't even good but, hey, IT IS FROM SPACE.

Went to Girl Scout camp for 3 years at ages 8, 9 and 10. It was pretty miserable. Sleeping in a freezing "tabin" (tent, pretty much, with a frame). Having to bunk with lame chicks. Having to poop in an outhouse that was a quarter mile away. The bugs. Awful food. Dehydration, fatigued all the time. Horrible campfire songs. After every meal we'd sing for, no lie, 2 hours. It was like six hours of singing a day.

When I was 14, though, I went to MUSIC CAMP that was PRETTY GREAT. It was in the mountains at a fancy resort. We had our own condos - like 6 chicks per condo. And there were boys. I didn't get laid. But I did have a lot of fun. I also told people I was a vegetarian even though I totally wasn't. I also moshed at the end of camp dance.

https://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=497686788782&set=t.556118782&type=3&theater

1994 with a way-too-young beard, but actual hair that I miss, giving a noogie to a camper. I was basically the equivalent of a counselor-in-training at this point. Did not go on to be a counselor because I missed my friends too much, who were driving around the whole summer discovering drugs. It was ostensibly a church camp, but mostly we just did all the awesome generic camping stuff: ropes course, pottery shed, raft trip, square dancing, etc.

Girl Scout camp otm

We had to hike at night in the middle of a stream and then bump our butts down "Fanny Hill", a muddy, rocky incline that led to a smooth combination of lower body bruises and the occasional leech iirc.

i went to camp Rainbow's End for the gifted and talented and just fyi even nerdling d&d kids will start whooping the shit out of each other and tormenting smaller geek varieties and calling each other fag when isolated in the middle of the woods somewhere. i spent most of my time being to big to pick on and avoiding activities in general. it was ok.

uh did not get laid, to complete the survey. was 11.

camp Rainbow's End for the gifted and talented

already I think you should be writing a book about this

ha i just found this googling rainbows end

57. The one time I went to camp (3rd-4th grade?), I got completely into the woodsman/wildboy aspect of it. Years later I read the letter that they sent to my parents reporting my achievements at Rainbow's End camp for the gifted and talented, and scribbled at the bottom of the letter was "John is a bright and talented boy, but frequently needs to be reminded to shower and change his clothes."

― John Justen, Thursday, October 25, 2007 8:21 PM (4 years ago)

went to ymca camp at age 12 and 13 iirc. it was pretty much a stereotypical boys summer camp, and i remember a lot of the other kids being kinda mean to me, but somehow i liked it enough to go twice, and would have gone one more time if not for health issues

in high school i went to a unitarian retreat thingy which i guess was kind of like camp but it was on a little island with a huge old creepy hotel on it. was more of a chill out for a week and do social justice related workshops thing than an outdoorsy sporty thing.

Oh, also re: laid. Did not get laid AT camp, but did with a fellow camper after camp. Like, a week later. Does that count?

4 years of summer-long (well, 7 weeks) of all girls sleep away camp. First kiss was dude from the neighboring boys camp, with whom we had dances.

Camp ruled so hard; loved it.

MUST KNOW MORE ABOUT CAMP RAINBOWS END

you really havent lived until youve seen a bunch of portly children with backpacks full of piers anthony xanth novels attempt to negotiate a ropes course

by the last few days it was pretty much like Lord of the Flies but everyone is Piggy and the conch is a well worn copy of the AD&D Fiends Folio

DJP, did BP break his arm when dude jumped off the ferris wheel made out of lashed-together logs?

ahahaha xpost

I am blanking on BP but yes, that is the incident I'm talking about

In my memory, that was Br0ck who flew through the air, breaking the fall with his arm. Was that J3remy?

Wait Br0ck was the dude who just wandered away, sending the victim into a death arc.

I thought it was 4ndy E tbh but now that you say that, I don't know

piggyback boner seems like such a classic camp thing

I never went to camp obv

Who was the sucker what got catapulted?

Was it even someone we knew? I thought the whole thing was that it was a stranger and the person from our troop OBVIOUSLY was the culprit but wouldn't admit it

... although now I'm wondering, was it R3g1n?

I remember it being funny. But I would have laughed at about 50% of our troop being unsuspectingly flung through the air by a lashed-together death trap.

I remember being very disdainful and angry about the whole thing (shocker, I know)

rest assured that I am cracking up now remembering it

Dude, there were two incidents! That's why I remember br0ck getting off.

1) br0ck wanders off at the bottom with melting bomb-pop in his hand. J3remy gets launched a few feet and gets wind knocked out of him, but is OK. Brock titters and runs off. 4ndy and I are there to witness it.

2) news comes down that they are closing and dismanteling the ferris wheel becsuse someone jumped off and a kid broke his arm. Did 4ndy confess, or was he just suspected?

OH OKAY this is making so much more sense

4ndy never confessed AFAIK

xp: there are some holes in your google-proofing there

a unitarian retreat thingy which i guess was kind of like camp but it was on a little island with a huge old creepy hotel on it.

lololol I know someone who worked at that camp for years and years, it's like an island resort, right? But they generate their own power, which is turned off at 8pm or something, and it's just generally the kind of place where when you get on a boat to the mainland, everyone starts waving money at you and begging for cartons of cigarettes/cases of gin.

I wanted Australia to have space camp SO badly growing up, Jeff I don't care if you didn't get any action you are my hero and I am SUPER JEALOUS. (you too kingfish)

It was sort of crazy I went. I entered to win a scholarship and wrote some dumb essay and got free entrance. Just had to get the family to drive me down to Florida to go. I actually have a video of everything that I did, but it's on some archaic technology called VHS and I haven't watched it in years.

Wow, Jeff. That's cool as hells. What kind of things did you do there, do you remember?

*hell

lol I'm turnings into Toki from Dethlocks

Wow, Jeff. That's cool as hells. What kind of things did you do there, do you remember?

Oh we did lots of stuff. Did a couple of mock missions, one I worked in Mission control, the other I was a mission specialists that got to do an EVA to repair a satellite. I drove a moon rover replica. We ate space food, which sort of sucked. Made and launched model rockets. Got in this big bouncy chair that simulated gravity on the moon. However even as a rock star space camp trainee, I still did not get laid.

omg that sounds so fun. did u get to meet any irl astronauts?

As is the lot of Irish youth I went to the Gaeltacht (aka Irish Language Camp) for a couple of summers. Irish classes in the morning, sundry activities in the afternoon (I remember a lot of volleyball), céilí dancing every evening.

When I was 12 it was great, hung out with old friends from home and new friends too, first time that girls were into me in any way (didn't come close to getting laid obviously, but I went on very chaste "dates"). The next year I came back and discovered I was now a social outcast as my friends from home had gone off to a different school and come back with tapes of the Prodigy and baggy raver outfits while I had been continuing along the road of introversion and nerdery.

All in all, the experience has left me with a lifelong aversion to céilís.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

when I was 10-12 or so, I begged my folks to send me to SKATER CAMP at this place, to no avail.

throughout high school, I attended various incarnations of SOCCER CAMP, ART CAMP & COLLEGE PREP (lolDORK) CAMP

Here's a question: did anyone among us attend Close Up, aka Politics Camp?

I went to Girl Scout day camp for I think a week. I was only in girl scouts in 1st - 3rd grade, so it would have been then. I remember the sort of creepy gymnastics teacher. He reminded me of Jeff Goldblum. I also remember the pool had three sections, and I had to take a swim test to be able to swim in all three parts.

I think it was after 5th grade, or maybe 6th I went to another day camp for two weeks. I didn't realize until after I went there that since it was at the Salesian School it was CATHOLIC. Whenever there was some religious thing (Mass? who knows) I was only one of a dozen or so kids not going. I think we watched The Neverending Story once. We went on a trip to Space Farms, and our bag lunch was a ham and cheese sandwich and a Pepsi. I hated soda and cheese.

Also, apparently it was HAUNTED???

This article has a picture of the pond we swam in. Ick.

i went to a 'leadership' thing in dc when i was in high school -- sat on the floor of the house, stuff like that, but i wouldn't call it 'camp'

Did it last a week? Were there kids from other parts of the country there?
I did Close Up my junior year, spring of 1992. It was pretty fun even if everyone called me Beetlejuice. I made a friend named Doug, but after the week was over he only wrote me a few letters and then disappeared. Oh well.

NO LAID

;_;

when I was 10-12 or so, I begged my folks to send me to SKATER CAMP at this place, to no avail.

Oh man, I know! And now there's a goddamn tv show of it to rub in my face how much fun it could have been.

I never got to throw axes at an old-timey villiage. http://www.camptomahawk.org/info/videos/tsrvideo

I went to a Methodist Church Camp with my childhood best friend in midwestern Tennessee (I think it was called Lakeshore).
I think I went two summers in a row (at ages 11 and 12, maybe). I had a counselor named Opie the seond year (the better year). At the talent show, he rapped over the instrumental version of Soho's "hippychick." We were the coolest cabin simply because Opie was our counselor.
I burned "Led Zeppelin" into a piece of wood and painted it.

so did not get laid.

We were invited to decorate the inside of the art cabin. I painted "Had a Dad" because I was a huge Jane's Addiction fan and I thought it would be subversive to sneak in this hidden message about loss of faith at the church camp I was going to. The art counselor (who was a super-cool deadhead) pulled me aside and was like "Wow. I'm sorry. What happened to your dad?" I felt like the biggest shitheel.

I went religious sleep-away camp, one-week sessions only, for 3 or 4 years. The people were horrible, tho nothing like remy's stories. Just horrible in your standard 4th/5th/6th grade ways. We drank a lot of bug juice and sang bible songs in Chapel, it was pretty typical.

Strange memory: One cool counselor had a sweatshirt that said "Andover" and I was sure it was supposed to say "Landrover." Because Massachusetts might as well have been the moon, I was barely aware it existed, much less some snooty private boarding school, that only happened in books about English children.

On my first day of camp (I think it was between 6th and 7th grade), pretty much immediately after my parents left, this kid who iirc was actually named Tommy Mottola whacked me in the balls with a pair of nunchucks. He was pretty spoiled and was always picking on other kids even though he was a big fat dork. He would also have crying breakdowns about shit.

A few years later, he was one of the first kids to bring a CD boombox to camp. I think he played Billy Joel CDs all the time. So he was being a prick one day like he almost always was, so I went back to the cabin on some made-up pretext and rubbed my cruddy camper finger all over the CD player's lens. He threw the biggest fucking fit when he tried to play Billy Joel that night.

Our camp had a bog walk which was always in disrepair, with boards rotting and sinking into the bog. I went through a rotten board up to my thigh and my shoe came off. I dug out the shoe, but there must be dozens of shoes in that bog, and maybe a couple boy scouts.

At Scout camp one year, there was this infamous kid named Nate in another troop. I had never seen him. Rumor was he had hit someone. Rumor was he smoked basket reeds. One day, we were walking past that troop's camp site, and a bored-sounding grown-up voice called out "Naaate, put down the axe..."

hahaha holy shit

i went to scout camp until, i broke my arm horribly on the last day of camp in the summer of 1990, and through a series of medical mishaps almost had to have my amputated, then almost died on the operating table, then had to have a tube inserted in my heart because they'd run out of veins for IVs in my arms, then had the tube later removed in a doctor's office with no anesthetic.

after which i stayed inside for the rest of my life.

upside was my parents felt so bad i got super mario three as a we're-sorry-you-almost-died present.

did you get laid tho

yes, by a sexy nurse

One year in scout camp, we were doing search-and-rescue training, all spread out across this enormous wooded hillside, walking in straight lines until presumably we were to find someone. I was shuffling along - this was pretty boring business actually, compared to like, rappelling or whatever - when I must have stepped on a wasp's nest, because all of the sudden I was covered in wasps. And so I did what you do when you get stung by wasps: I started yelling "fuuuuuuuuuuuucccck! shit! fuck! ow!" And the scoutmaster and his buddies turned around and proceeded to holler at me for cussing for a good 30 seconds before they realized that I was in pain and distress. So I got to walk down the hill (by myself) to the nurse's station where I chilled out for the rest of the afternoon.

This camp was also notable for offering Cröonchy Stars cereal for breakfast years after it was discontinued by Post.

the only interesting camp story i can remember is getting my (sister's) copy of siamese dream confiscated on the bus on the way there because the booklet has a picture where d'arcy is wearing a mesh shirt. i thought it was a cool picture but had no interest in boobs, but of course the kid next to me got all excited and attracted a counselor's attention.

all the guys in my cabin the last year i went liked the backstreet boys, and i wonder now whether that was coincidence or conspiracy

I was so fascinated by summer camp as a kid bcz obviously it is a recurring feature of much American children's lit/movies and of course Peanuts. I think I kind of thought it sounded fun even though I am totally a Charlie Brown and the closest I ever got to "summer camp" was one overnight stay in a youth hostel with a Christian youth group aged 13, which was p. much hell on earth and the moment I decided that, you know, fuck this Christianity concept

(a gang of mean girlz who I'd never seen at the youth group before turned up; meanwhile, it was my period, but the only toilets were 10 minutes' walk through a field from the sleeping area and my fellow less-cool-than-the-mean-girls companions kept waiting for me right outside the cubicle while I tried not to make any suspicious rustling noises, asking why I was spending so long in there)

so if that's how bad one night can be - and remy's post suggests it can be much, much worse - I think a week of it might have killed me. PS I did not get laid, obv

After 2 years at a Christian camp, I tried to shake it up (hoping it would be less unpleasant) and went to a secular week-away camp. It was worse, because the sex and hooking up kinds of cruelty were right out in the open, instead of being hidden behind embarrassed, still-mostly-innocent oblique references.

Er 3 yrs at the Christian camp, I should have said.

British kids don't really do summer camp but some of yr upper-middle class British teenagers go off to historical reenactment sites in country houses where 5% of you randomly get to be the Elizabethan Lord of the Manor's family and the rest of you get to be unwashed Tudor peasants working on the land and "below stairs" - two of my friends went to this for a couple of summers and came back and made us all very jealous for months afterwards with cryptic allusions to possible sexual and drug-related activity

(we were all p. sheltered, me especially so)

everyone else also went off to backpack along Hadrian's Wall the summer after A-Levels but by then I'd been scared out of ever going to any kind of event that I couldn't leave within 5 hours

I feel we have been culturally misled that summer camp = sexytimes

Haha, oh god, I didn't realise you could do those Ye Olde Upstairs Downstairs things as a camp. We did that sort of thing as an educational day trip at school, can't see how it would end up as anything other than Stanford Prison Experiment for minors when extended....

iirc you had to ~apply~ with a personal statement and ~be chosen~ and (get your mother to) sew your own costume! far too much effort for the likes of me

Did you guys go to Space Camp in Huntsville, AL or the one in Florida?

I grew up in Huntsville and went to Space Camp there in 1986. I don't remember any of the kids I met, but it would be cool if young ilxors crossed paths.

I didnt get to go to space camp there but i visited at one point and it was pretty much the best day ever.

isn't tombot from huntsville?

I remember someone else on here being from Huntsville...think it is tombot.

omg JF went to space camp too?

as an aside, it'd be HELLA cool if we had more ye oldecamp photos itt

omg JF went to space camp too?

I grew up in the middle of the space industry fwiw. My dad has worked for Nasa contractors since before I was born (and just retired in 2011).

I learned about it in a Drive By Truckers song 'While over there in Huntsville, puttin people on the moon" :D

I never had money for camp like in the movies. I went on tour with a marching band, which was like camp and was a total blast!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Tombot (or parents of tombot) definitely did time in Huntsville, but I don't know what the time frame was. . .

I went to Space Camp in Florida in 1990.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7243/7311862320_6843f2bb13_c.jpg

Which one is me???

the one with the jeans???

Front row, Chuck Taylor's.

hipster

Yeah the american style camps just werent done in Aus, as VG said, though some ppl did Scouts and stuff, I suppose. I did go on one Christian "camp" (well, staying in dorms at a convention centre based in a rugged river/ mountain area just out of town) but that was over Easter, so stupidly cold. And stupidly religious, so embarrasingly much that I stopped being religious after that weekend out of disgust. I think I wrote about all that on some thread here years ago. It sucked, not because it was traumatic but because it was insanely BORING and cheesy.

Oh wait, we did go on a school camp in yr 12 for biology/geology classes, where we were obstensibly researching a rocky coastal area in a national park about 3 hrs drive from where I lived. Gorgeous coastal country, a place I was actually familiar wiht anyway aside from the trip (as my cousins lived nearby) but jesus christ it was ruined by the prissy entitled princesses in my class who spent the whole 2-3 days whining non stop abiut EVERYTHING. Pit toilets? THE HORROR. We have to sleep in a TENT? OMG. We cant have SHOWERS? FFS you dumb cows its a CAMPING TRIP. It was a rugged one, and yes we were pushed too hard (4 hour hike over very steep cliff/rock/beach areas that ruined everyone) but despite that, the prissy princesses were whining so hard, I spent the whole trip fuelled by a little fire of smug schadenfreude.

Jeff you are my new hero! :D

DJP are you prepared to send the twins to german camp

I will be!