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Friday, July 11, 2008

Summer Camp Friday Five

Mother Laura writes:
We're settling into our new new apartment, and after a lifetime at Montessori Katie is having a fantastic summer at YMCA day camp. Meanwhile, Nicholas is packing up for a week at Camp Julian, shared by the Episcopal dioceses of Los Angeles and San Diego. His lists of supplies and rules--except for the ropes course available to the teenagers and the ban on IPODs and cell phones--bring back memories of my own happy times weeks at Y camp Ta Ta Pochon, funded by selling countless cases of butter toffee peanuts. So, in celebration of summer, please share your own memories and preferences about camp.


1. Did you go to sleep away camp, or day camp, as a child? Wish you could? Or sometimes wish you hadn't?
I went to day camp a couple of summers. I can't say I found it life altering either way; I did more camping as a girl scout.

2. How about camping out? Dream vacation, nightmare, or somewhere in between?
We love to camp but haven't been camping since we moved 2 years ago. Really before then, I guess, because Ben was recovering from surgery. It comes pretty close to dream vacation; there's a campground in the mountains that's rarely full, has a decent bathhouse (I don't like to be *too* rustic, and where the cell phones don't work).

3. Have you ever worked as a camp counselor, or been to a camp for your denomination for either work or pleasure?
Nope.

4. Most dramatic memory of camp, or camping out?
From a girl scout camp-out: our leader was married to a boy scout leader, so we went to the last weekend of a boy scout camping event. They told a ghost story about the "devil dog" Red-eye and then later that night used a flashlight with a red lens to scare the other girls in the tent. Not me, of course.

5. What is your favorite camp song or songs? Bonus points if you link to a recording or video.
Oh boy...Well, there's "Pink Pajamas," which I won't quote here. And the song about the Whiffer Woffer, which my sister is teaching my niece. That's about the cutest thing I've ever heard. That one starts, "I woke us Sunday morning, I looked upon the wall. The skeeters and the bedbugs were playing a game of ball. The score was 6 to nothin'; the skeeters were ahead. The bedbugs hit a homerun and knocked me out of bed." Sadly, there's nearly nothing on YouTube for either of these songs.

6 comments:

  1. love that song, and the scary story, story!!!

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  2. ooh i think i heard that dog story... eek! any song with skeeters is sure to be a hit... i'm sure lyle lovitt's sung it right?

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  3. That story does sound scary.

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  4. Ah yes, the Pink Pajamas song. Hey, Garrison Keillor has done it on the radio, so it should be OK....

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  5. Woo, scary camp stories! I'd forgotten about those!

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