Going to Camp

When I was a teenager, I was attending a church that had a nice youth group, and as shy as I was, I was pretty comfortable around them; they were very good to me. I remember going to summer camp once, and that was when I was a teenager. It was a Christian camp made up of many church youth groups, including ours. There were games, Bible study groups, and various "interest groups" (for lack of better terminology). I've always loved to sing, so I joined the camp choir (one of the "interest groups"). The teen years were hard for me, but this was one of the best times I ever had.

Camp was always fun. Inevitably some poor green horn would show up asking to borrow two small sky hooks. We always helpfully sent him on to the next campsite.

This one time, at bandcamp... UPDATE: Flute players are freaks and you know it, but did you know that the girls on clarinet are freakier and just hide it better?

Close order drill at Boy Scout camp was how I learned to avoid any activity associated with militarism.

I didn't go to camp, I was needed on the farm.

For the most part, I absolutely despised it. My parents, feeling it might help me "grow",  forced me into attending an overnight camp located in what seemed to me to be the absolute wilderness of central NJ for a week when I was about 13. As far as I was concerned, I might as well have been in the vast empty wastes of Kansas or Texas (even though central NJ is hilly and well-forested), and I hated every minute of it. There were a lot of inner-city kids there; I wasn't a racist, but I hadn't been around many inner-city kids at that age, and was extremely intimidated. One older and fierce-looking kid from Newark, I think, had the bunk below mine and figured that he'd shake me up a little bit. I was lying on my upper bunk, my head resting on my folded arms, when his switchblade knife came up through the mattress, inches away from my face. He actually wasn't trying to send me back home in a box-- it was his idea of a joke. He actually seemed to take mercy on me and treated me with some kin... Read more

I actually never went to camp but the stories I hear range from good to "why did my parents send me to the awful place?!"

Camp was wonderful...of course kids always get homesick the first time out but will eventually get over it.  I went every summer.  At first to a Christian camp near home because they had horses.  After a few times there though I asked my parents how many times I needed to be saved....(I was baptised ) so they then found a horse camp for future summers.  I even took my horse!  I really feel camp is a great thing.  I know so many kids that go off to college and want to come home.  College was a breeze after all those trips to camp!!!

My parents were big believers in sending us to camps. With 5 kids I don't think they could have survived the summers without this. I loved going for weeklong camping sessions with the Boy Scouts, football and basketball camps, and day camps when I was younger. These were definitely great times.