bitter nostalgia
Sometimes, I still get upset about it.
I first went to Camp Louise during the summer of 1996 for "Night Owls", and I actually had a pretty horrible time. I went with two girls I knew, and they were best friends. I liked one and she was my friend, and didn't really care for the other so much, but we were all nice to each other.
I remember getting there and finding that four people slept in a tent, and I felt bad that there was another girl in our tent because we all knew each other and she didn't know anyone. They befriended her, though, and left me out of almost everything that happened--except when the girl I liked and I found the wishing bridge while following a mother deer and her two fawns through the woods from Yakima to Hemlock.
What's kind of funny about that, is the girl who was the odd one out, befriended the girl who was my friend and they kept in touch briefly. My friend went to the other girl's house once, and the girl showed my friend a drawer with like needles and syringes and crazy shit in it, and my friend never went back. I always knew that girl was weird.
I loved camp, though. I cried about being left out so much, but I loved the camp itself. I liked the special meals, sleeping in tents, the animals, the counselors, being away from my family, and how my baby brother used to draw me pictures and send them to me. I asked my parents to go again the next summer.
The summer of 1997 was an interesting one for me. Most of you on my friends list are Hanson fans, and that was THE SUMMER for us. =) There were 14 or so girls in the program I was in ("Back to Basics"), and they were all like 14, 15 and 16. I'm almost positive that no other girl was younger than 14. Another girl and I were the only 11-year-olds, but at least we were in the same tent. We both really liked Hanson, and everyone else made fun of us for it, but we just kept staying up late and whispering about them and how she wanted to marry Taylor and I wanted to marry Zac. =)
That summer, they had pink Brownie Girl Scout sweatpants in the trading post, in youth sizes 14 and 16. They were $2.50, and all the girls decided that we were all going to buy them and wear them to the last night campfire. I still have a picture of all of us as "The Pink Ladies".
From that last night campfire onward, I cried at every one, because it meant leaving camp the next day and I never wanted to go. The counselors would tell us a story about a girl named Connie, who loved Camp Louise so much that she ran away into the mountains so she never had to go home. When you'd call her name out at the lake and ask her to come home, your echo would sound like a "NO!" and they told us that it was "Connie". I never believed it because I knew the police looked for missing kids, but part of me always kind of wanted to run away to be able to stay at camp, too.
I did other awesome programs my next few summers at camp--"Crazy for Crafts", "Roughin' It", which was a backpacking one, "Curtain Call" which was acting/writing, and "Rescue One" which was First Aid and stuff.
"Crazy for Crafts" was the best program ever for me, because we had arts & crafts every day. I actually wrote about my counselor, Chica [counselors had names they picked, they didn't use their real ones], for one of my college entrance essays. I don't know if she was in an accident or if it was a birth defect, but she didn't have all of her fingers--some were missing, some were stubs, and maybe two or three on each hand were normal. On the fingernails she did have, she always wore lime green nail polish. She never talked about it to my recollection, but it really taught me a lot about being comfortable with who you are. My grandmother has arthritis, and her fingers are bent and crooked. She never paints her nails and doesn't like to really show people her hands. Chica didn't care--she was comfortable with who she was. I liked her as a counselor then, but looking back, she was a very strong woman to deal with something like that, I think.
During "Roughin' It" in front of the bathrooms at Birches, I had my frame pack on, and that plus all my gear probably weighed almost as much as I did at the time. I tried to step over another girl's backpack, lost my balance, and fell. I stood up and there was blood GUSHING from my right knee. My sock was already red at the top as soon as I got up. There were rocks in my knee and everything. My counselors freaked out and radioed too the health center, and someone came out to birches in Buzzy the golf cart to take me there. Only counselors could ride in Buzzy, so that was SO COOL. They cleaned the rocks out of my knee and poured hydrogen peroxide in the holes, and it fizzed and bubbled and was just awesome. The nurse said it would hurt, but it didn't. They said that was the worst injury they'd seen all summer, and it was one of the last weeks of camp. I was so proud, and I still have a small scar.
In "Curtain Call" we were supposed to write a play and put it on for everyone at camp. I couldn't act, so I offered to write the play, and we all decided that would be a good idea. It was more of a collaborative effort, and I don't remember if the initial idea was mine or someone else's, but I remember that we put a bunch of fairy tales together somehow by having a little girl get sucked into a story book or something.
I knew that summer that I had to be a counselor there. These two girls were fighting constantly--they were best friends from home, and one kept leaving the other one out of everything. I talked to them about it a lot, but it got out of hand, so I told our counselor, Spike, about it and she had a talk with them. I can't really explain what that incident had to do with it, but it made me 100% sure if I hadn't been already, I guess.
"Rescue One" was totally fun, too. I remember getting 100% on my CPR certification test, and having the best lung function of the group when we toured a hospital. (I attributed that to the fact that I was still a swimmer at the time, and could swim 2 and a half laps of a 25-yard pool without breathing.) I also had Spike again, who was already my most favorite counselor ever. Her birthday was the Friday of that week, and our whole unit stayed up at the bathrooms in Yakima making her presents. We each write her a letter and made her a big card with stationary we brought and some stuff we hijacked from arts & crafts. We all went up at lunch time and gave an announcement to the camp that it was Spike's birthday, gave her the presents, and she cried. If you knew Spike, you knew she didn't cry. It meant so much to all of us. That was her last summer at Camp Louise, and we all made it memorable.
The next two summers, 2002 and 2003, were my CIT 1 and 2 years, where I went to camp for 4 weeks and then 5. I had just started dating James in the summer of '02, and I wrote him a letter every day. He sent me a big package at one point, and it was adorable.
Alien was our director when we were CIT 1s, and Sprout was our director as CIT 2s. My summers as a CIT were my best ones at camp, even though CITs get the shit end of every stick. =) They work as hard as the counselors do, but they don't get paid for it. We all got so close though, and I met two of my best best best friends those two summers, and some very very good friends as well.
The summer of 2004 was my first year as a staff member. All the CIT 2s from the previous summer (3 of us) had come back as staff, which is actually a rare occurance. My programs were all successful and all my kids loved me that summer, except this one nightmare camper who used to sit naked on her bed and refuse to get dressed in the morning.
There were a few cliques in that staff, and we never figured out why, but quite a few of them didn't like me. My last program was horrific because of the people I had to work with--one of the girls once, a 7-year-old, came up to me and said "Schatzie [my name], why doess _____ hate you?" I was totally taken aback. I told the girl that we were friends and we were just kidding around, and she believed me. I cried that night and every night after.
After the last Friday of camp, the staff stays to Saturday afternoon to clean and do miscellaneous things around the camp. I had a family reunion that day, so I was put on the "do not rehire" list for missing it, even though they knew in advance I wouldn't be there and even though TWO other staff members, a mother and a daughter, had a day off for a family reunion earlier in the summer. Nevermind that day was a check-in day, which are difficult, and that the mother worked in the kitchen, where they're always short-staffed. I was really upset about that, but whatever.
Like an idiot, I begged for my job back the next summer and had other staffers who liked me beg also, and I went back. I was fired after the second week of camp (third week of the season--first week is staff training) because my unit leader went to the head of camp with a bunch of stories and lies that never really happened, and that I could actually prove didn't happen, but I never had the chance. This counselor is still at camp, and told some of my friends at the open house that she purposely got me fired. We never figured out why.
I cried about it a lot for a long time. I felt like I grew up at Camp Louise. I always returned home a different person than I was when I had arrived. I couldn't believe how unfair it was, how no one would listen to me, and how so many plainly BAD counselors still had their jobs and I didn't.
Now the whole place is fucked up. They fired the best camp director in the history of the place and refuse to rehire Ashley, even though she's more qualified than any staff member who's there currently and she'd actually save the camp money because she's already CPR certified as a nurse's aide. They did rehire some people who aren't as qualified, and the person who got me fired, and BOYS. They hadn't had boys at camp since my first or second summer there, but that's how short-staffed they were this year, even though they told Ashley there were budget problems and they were at full capacity with staff.
It's the biggest load of stinky shit there ever was. I'm glad I'm not going back. If I could be rehired, I wouldn't go. Not with everything that went down after this summer ended with administrative changes and the firing of excellent people.
I just wish I knew where I went wrong, and I wish camp wasn't such a crappy place any more. A certain few people who fucked this all up can rot in hell. =)
At least I have the most wonderful memories of when Camp Louise was a great place to grow up.
- - - - -
If you read all that...you're probably either my boyfriend or my wife, haha. Work was decent today, I spent a lot of wonderful time with James afterward, and Melanie didn't even flinch when I poked her this morning.
Zac Hanson, the youngest one, got married last Saturday. My icon is of him and his wife, Kate, obviously at the wedding. I actually met her in 2004 at a concert and didn't know who she was--she was working merch and looked bored. We talked about college and stuff, and she was so nice to me. I found out sometime last year that she was Zac's girlfriend/fiancee, and it was kind of amusing. She's so nice and so pretty.
I first went to Camp Louise during the summer of 1996 for "Night Owls", and I actually had a pretty horrible time. I went with two girls I knew, and they were best friends. I liked one and she was my friend, and didn't really care for the other so much, but we were all nice to each other.
I remember getting there and finding that four people slept in a tent, and I felt bad that there was another girl in our tent because we all knew each other and she didn't know anyone. They befriended her, though, and left me out of almost everything that happened--except when the girl I liked and I found the wishing bridge while following a mother deer and her two fawns through the woods from Yakima to Hemlock.
What's kind of funny about that, is the girl who was the odd one out, befriended the girl who was my friend and they kept in touch briefly. My friend went to the other girl's house once, and the girl showed my friend a drawer with like needles and syringes and crazy shit in it, and my friend never went back. I always knew that girl was weird.
I loved camp, though. I cried about being left out so much, but I loved the camp itself. I liked the special meals, sleeping in tents, the animals, the counselors, being away from my family, and how my baby brother used to draw me pictures and send them to me. I asked my parents to go again the next summer.
The summer of 1997 was an interesting one for me. Most of you on my friends list are Hanson fans, and that was THE SUMMER for us. =) There were 14 or so girls in the program I was in ("Back to Basics"), and they were all like 14, 15 and 16. I'm almost positive that no other girl was younger than 14. Another girl and I were the only 11-year-olds, but at least we were in the same tent. We both really liked Hanson, and everyone else made fun of us for it, but we just kept staying up late and whispering about them and how she wanted to marry Taylor and I wanted to marry Zac. =)
That summer, they had pink Brownie Girl Scout sweatpants in the trading post, in youth sizes 14 and 16. They were $2.50, and all the girls decided that we were all going to buy them and wear them to the last night campfire. I still have a picture of all of us as "The Pink Ladies".
From that last night campfire onward, I cried at every one, because it meant leaving camp the next day and I never wanted to go. The counselors would tell us a story about a girl named Connie, who loved Camp Louise so much that she ran away into the mountains so she never had to go home. When you'd call her name out at the lake and ask her to come home, your echo would sound like a "NO!" and they told us that it was "Connie". I never believed it because I knew the police looked for missing kids, but part of me always kind of wanted to run away to be able to stay at camp, too.
I did other awesome programs my next few summers at camp--"Crazy for Crafts", "Roughin' It", which was a backpacking one, "Curtain Call" which was acting/writing, and "Rescue One" which was First Aid and stuff.
"Crazy for Crafts" was the best program ever for me, because we had arts & crafts every day. I actually wrote about my counselor, Chica [counselors had names they picked, they didn't use their real ones], for one of my college entrance essays. I don't know if she was in an accident or if it was a birth defect, but she didn't have all of her fingers--some were missing, some were stubs, and maybe two or three on each hand were normal. On the fingernails she did have, she always wore lime green nail polish. She never talked about it to my recollection, but it really taught me a lot about being comfortable with who you are. My grandmother has arthritis, and her fingers are bent and crooked. She never paints her nails and doesn't like to really show people her hands. Chica didn't care--she was comfortable with who she was. I liked her as a counselor then, but looking back, she was a very strong woman to deal with something like that, I think.
During "Roughin' It" in front of the bathrooms at Birches, I had my frame pack on, and that plus all my gear probably weighed almost as much as I did at the time. I tried to step over another girl's backpack, lost my balance, and fell. I stood up and there was blood GUSHING from my right knee. My sock was already red at the top as soon as I got up. There were rocks in my knee and everything. My counselors freaked out and radioed too the health center, and someone came out to birches in Buzzy the golf cart to take me there. Only counselors could ride in Buzzy, so that was SO COOL. They cleaned the rocks out of my knee and poured hydrogen peroxide in the holes, and it fizzed and bubbled and was just awesome. The nurse said it would hurt, but it didn't. They said that was the worst injury they'd seen all summer, and it was one of the last weeks of camp. I was so proud, and I still have a small scar.
In "Curtain Call" we were supposed to write a play and put it on for everyone at camp. I couldn't act, so I offered to write the play, and we all decided that would be a good idea. It was more of a collaborative effort, and I don't remember if the initial idea was mine or someone else's, but I remember that we put a bunch of fairy tales together somehow by having a little girl get sucked into a story book or something.
I knew that summer that I had to be a counselor there. These two girls were fighting constantly--they were best friends from home, and one kept leaving the other one out of everything. I talked to them about it a lot, but it got out of hand, so I told our counselor, Spike, about it and she had a talk with them. I can't really explain what that incident had to do with it, but it made me 100% sure if I hadn't been already, I guess.
"Rescue One" was totally fun, too. I remember getting 100% on my CPR certification test, and having the best lung function of the group when we toured a hospital. (I attributed that to the fact that I was still a swimmer at the time, and could swim 2 and a half laps of a 25-yard pool without breathing.) I also had Spike again, who was already my most favorite counselor ever. Her birthday was the Friday of that week, and our whole unit stayed up at the bathrooms in Yakima making her presents. We each write her a letter and made her a big card with stationary we brought and some stuff we hijacked from arts & crafts. We all went up at lunch time and gave an announcement to the camp that it was Spike's birthday, gave her the presents, and she cried. If you knew Spike, you knew she didn't cry. It meant so much to all of us. That was her last summer at Camp Louise, and we all made it memorable.
The next two summers, 2002 and 2003, were my CIT 1 and 2 years, where I went to camp for 4 weeks and then 5. I had just started dating James in the summer of '02, and I wrote him a letter every day. He sent me a big package at one point, and it was adorable.
Alien was our director when we were CIT 1s, and Sprout was our director as CIT 2s. My summers as a CIT were my best ones at camp, even though CITs get the shit end of every stick. =) They work as hard as the counselors do, but they don't get paid for it. We all got so close though, and I met two of my best best best friends those two summers, and some very very good friends as well.
The summer of 2004 was my first year as a staff member. All the CIT 2s from the previous summer (3 of us) had come back as staff, which is actually a rare occurance. My programs were all successful and all my kids loved me that summer, except this one nightmare camper who used to sit naked on her bed and refuse to get dressed in the morning.
There were a few cliques in that staff, and we never figured out why, but quite a few of them didn't like me. My last program was horrific because of the people I had to work with--one of the girls once, a 7-year-old, came up to me and said "Schatzie [my name], why doess _____ hate you?" I was totally taken aback. I told the girl that we were friends and we were just kidding around, and she believed me. I cried that night and every night after.
After the last Friday of camp, the staff stays to Saturday afternoon to clean and do miscellaneous things around the camp. I had a family reunion that day, so I was put on the "do not rehire" list for missing it, even though they knew in advance I wouldn't be there and even though TWO other staff members, a mother and a daughter, had a day off for a family reunion earlier in the summer. Nevermind that day was a check-in day, which are difficult, and that the mother worked in the kitchen, where they're always short-staffed. I was really upset about that, but whatever.
Like an idiot, I begged for my job back the next summer and had other staffers who liked me beg also, and I went back. I was fired after the second week of camp (third week of the season--first week is staff training) because my unit leader went to the head of camp with a bunch of stories and lies that never really happened, and that I could actually prove didn't happen, but I never had the chance. This counselor is still at camp, and told some of my friends at the open house that she purposely got me fired. We never figured out why.
I cried about it a lot for a long time. I felt like I grew up at Camp Louise. I always returned home a different person than I was when I had arrived. I couldn't believe how unfair it was, how no one would listen to me, and how so many plainly BAD counselors still had their jobs and I didn't.
Now the whole place is fucked up. They fired the best camp director in the history of the place and refuse to rehire Ashley, even though she's more qualified than any staff member who's there currently and she'd actually save the camp money because she's already CPR certified as a nurse's aide. They did rehire some people who aren't as qualified, and the person who got me fired, and BOYS. They hadn't had boys at camp since my first or second summer there, but that's how short-staffed they were this year, even though they told Ashley there were budget problems and they were at full capacity with staff.
It's the biggest load of stinky shit there ever was. I'm glad I'm not going back. If I could be rehired, I wouldn't go. Not with everything that went down after this summer ended with administrative changes and the firing of excellent people.
I just wish I knew where I went wrong, and I wish camp wasn't such a crappy place any more. A certain few people who fucked this all up can rot in hell. =)
At least I have the most wonderful memories of when Camp Louise was a great place to grow up.
- - - - -
If you read all that...you're probably either my boyfriend or my wife, haha. Work was decent today, I spent a lot of wonderful time with James afterward, and Melanie didn't even flinch when I poked her this morning.
Zac Hanson, the youngest one, got married last Saturday. My icon is of him and his wife, Kate, obviously at the wedding. I actually met her in 2004 at a concert and didn't know who she was--she was working merch and looked bored. We talked about college and stuff, and she was so nice to me. I found out sometime last year that she was Zac's girlfriend/fiancee, and it was kind of amusing. She's so nice and so pretty.