So with the end of August having just happened, I thought
I'd share some summer camp stories, or as I've come to think of them,
MountainView Memories. To clarify, the summer camp that I attended most of my
summer camp career and where all my camp stories come from is called Camp
Mountainview. A camp run by the Salvation Army located in Northern B.C. between
the towns of Houston and Smithers.
And so I will tell you of Corey my first camp friend, the
brass alarm clock, and the midday shower. I will also share with you photos of
my friends and time there.
Before I start I should clarify something, Camp Mountainview
has more than just summertime camps, throughout the year there are a few
weekend long camps which I also attended. Actually my first time at what I will
now refer to as CMV (Camp Mountainview) was during one of those weekend camps.
That was when I met Corey, as I mentioned above he was my first camp friend. He
was very charismatic, but other than for that reason you wouldn't normally
assume that he was a pastor's kid, or at least he didn't fit into one of the
stereotypes attributed to being a pastor's kid (but then again that's not odd,
seldom have I met one who does). Corey was a player, and he knew how the game
worked, now I can't tell you if he still plays or if he has now become a one
woman man. Okay, so from time to time he'd need help covering or manipulating
the truth so he wouldn't get caught, and that's where I'd come in. I was known
to be quite honest or at least more honest than Corey when it came to certain
things. So some of the girls he would get involved with would talk to me,
confide in me, and ask me about Corey, I would stretch the truth and did this
for two reasons.
1. Even though the girls were my friends as well Corey was
my friend before they were, and the length of time that someone had been my
friend meant something to me.
2. At my core I've always felt like I am a story teller,
because telling stories has come easy to me, and even though there is usually a
string of truth running through most stories (like the one I'm telling bending
subtle facts are easy and simple to do).
So I thought I was helping and I would do what I could to
help because that's what friends do. But looking back I regret helping him
cheat, but I don't think I'd do it any differently because me and him probably
wouldn't have become so friendly, even if we now don't talk.
Okay, so now, the brass alarm clock. This might sound like a
joke but this story start like this. This one time at band camp, well okay it
was "creative arts" camp technically, but that's because at that time
there was very little interest from campers in brass instruments. There were
only two of us there for that reason on that year, me a trombone player and
this guy named Luke a trumpet player. (A little thing that I should mention is
that the last night of camp was once known as prank night, where campers could
pull pranks on the other campers or staff on staff. These pranks had to be done
before everyone else wakes up, they had to be essentially harmless and it
usually ended up being boys versus girls. For example, the female CIT's one
year put an aluminum canoe at the top of the stairs blocking the door to the
chore boy's cabin; they then knocked on the windows to get the boys attention,
but also to taunt them. In retaliation the chore boys were far less creative
and the next week they flew one bra belonging to each CIT from the flag pole.
Another time the girls cabin spread honey on the door handles and door step and
then covered the honey in puffed wheat cereal. And this is what I consider
retaliation for that.) How Luke wasn't there for the above stated incident but
I was, and it wasn't hard to convince him to help me with my prank because who
isn't up for a little summer camp mischief. So what we did was borrowed the
alarm clock from one of our counselors and set it to go off at 4:45 am, (enough
time for us to wake up, get dressed and outside for 5 am, 2.5 hours before we'd
normally be getting up) we grabbed our instruments walked to the outside of the
girls cabin, and we made noise with them, because to say we played them would
be wrong. We blew into our instruments with the purpose of being loud enough to
wake the girls up so much that they couldn't get back to sleep, but that was not
the result. We ended up waking up the whole camp and though Luke and I were
amused everyone else seemed a bit grumpy until after breakfast and some a bit
longer than that.
Now to the midday shower, this happened at the teen camp
week on my second to last summer that I attended which would have made me
around 16 I believe, maybe 15. It was an early August day, it was around 3 in
the afternoon we had just come back from swimming in a local lake and we had
free time until dinner. A group of us had just dropped off our towels and
started walking down to see if we could find some fresh wild strawberries and
then the rain started "the way you fall asleep, first slowly then all at
once" to paraphrase John Green. It wasn't a cool rain, but it was a nice
warm summer rain. But it wasn't a light rain either but a heavy rain, which
gave the group of us an idea; one of us I cannot remember whom but they ran
quickly to their cabin and then brought back with them a bottle of shampoo. So
we were out there not caring about our clothes getting wet and we were washing
our hair with shampoo and a warm heavy rain shower and not long after we had
finished washing our hair the rain had stopped, as if it rained just so we
could wash the lake out of our hair.
Post Script: Did you ever go to summer camp? If so what are
your favourite memories?
Also it this means anything, it was not romantic at all and
it didn't mean anything to either of us and it wasn't even all that big of a
deal, but that camp was where I touched my first boob.
Left:Corey
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