The Camp Chronicles (Part II)

To this day, when I look back on that summer I burst into laughter. I can’t even count the amount of inside jokes we created. Actually, at the end of the summer, we all made shirts and wrote all of the funniest jokes on them. I’m so glad we did because without them I probably would have forgotten most of them.

One of my favorite moments that I will never, ever forget is when our bunk was under attack by bugs. It was about 10pm, and we were all getting ready for bed. I was sitting on my bed writing in my journal when all of the sudden I heard Alana scream from across the bunk. She jumped up on Bre’s bed and yelled, “There’s a huge beetle on the floor! Oh my God, step on it!” I started laughing so hard I nearly peed myself. Bre moved quickly and swept it out the door with a broom. Not even a minute later, Aleks jumped up from her bed and ran across the bunk. There was a spider hanging down over Tipper’s bed. Tipper came running in when she heard where it was and yelled, “Ew! Get it away from my bed!” I started laughing even harder as I watched Catina attempt to squish it with a shoe. The best part came when Bre spotted another beetle on the outside of the screen window by her bed.
“What is with all of these bugs tonight?” she exclaimed as she flicked the screen in an attempt to make the beetle fall. Katie, in her pajamas, then ran down the aisle of the bunk screaming “They’re coming from the walls! They’re coming from the walls! Oh no! They’re coming from-” Just as she reached the bathroom door her pants dropped to her ankles. She stopped mid sentence and said, “-my pants fell down!” Everyone in the bunk broke out in laughter for a good five minutes.

That joke lasted the entire summer, and we all imitated Katie’s trouser dropping moment at one point or another. That wasn’t the only joke that stuck with us, though. Another great moment came when we were stuck in the bunk during a thunder storm, waiting to go eat dinner. We were all changing out of our smelly work-out clothes into some nice casual clothes to wear to dinner. Alana, however, had fallen asleep as soon as she hit her bed. We decided to let her sleep until dinner. When we heard the announcement over the loudspeaker to come to dinner, we began to gently nudge Alana awake. She was out like a light, and she wasn’t waking up. So Katie yelled, “ALANA! TIME TO GET UP FOR DINNER!” Alana shot up in bed and looked around in a panic saying, “Is it over? Is it over?” Naturally none of us had any idea what she was talking about, so we all laughed hysterically. She got so mad at us for that. Turns out she was just disoriented and didn’t know what she was talking about. But we never let her live that one down. For the rest of the summer we constantly asked Alana if “it was over”.

Alana got her fair share of teasing from us that summer, but so did everyone. Like poor Aleks. She soon gave us a reason to tease her. It was around lunch time and we were all gathered in the bunk resting before lunch. I had been upset about something that day and started writing in my journal. Katie asked me why I was writing so much and I told her it was just how I coped with problems. Well one thing lead to another and we ended up asking Aleks how she coped with her problems. Aleks, English being her second language, asked very sweetly, “What is ‘cope’?” Well of course we all laughed at her, but in a playful way. She laughed at herself. We explained what it meant, but we always laughed about that moment from then on out.

Yeah, we had some good times. A lot of laughs. A lot of joking around. But it wasn’t always fun. As summer camp tends to be, it was definitely full of drama…