Tajar Tales

[who_stole_my_loofa]

I know to some of you this will be a silly question...

So at my camp we don't do Tajar Tales so I really don't know waht they are, can someone please explain?

Loofa

[S_R_Star]

Tajar is a magical camp creature. "He lives in a camp, around a camp, over a camp, and all the place that a camp was he lived." "He looks something like a tiger and something like a jaguar and something like badger and if you should see him once you would forget what he looked like and if you should see him twice you would forget to forget what he looked like" He gets filled with folly and dances in the moonlight causing all sorts of mischief.
(If i got those two quotes wrong SORRY)


I guess its kinda hard to explain, they are stories of this magical creature who gets into mischief around a camp.

At my camp we read one of the Tales at our opening campfire for each session. This year i read it about 6 times. :)

This year i was also "Tajar" with one of my co-counselors. We would go around camp and play pranks, usually to the counselors cabins or the unit lodge, never the campers stuff. So often you would hear that we had been "Tajar'd" in retaliatoin.
My favourite one we did was we got some Orange Tape and crime scened the whole camp, the barn, the pool, the program center, the dining hall, the kitchen! We promptly had our beds removed form our cabin and set up in the middle of our staff unit. It was all in fun though!

Maybe others will have a better explanation.

[Dave]

Well this is certainly something new to me! :P Sounds interesting though.

[tajarbud]

I really like Tajar Tales. I heard Tajar Tales as a camper and continued to use them as a counselor and CD. At one camp that I worked at TT was a big part of first night campfire. We had a a big fake looking book (two pieces of plywood decorated to look like a big storybook) that we slipped the current tale into. One of us would read from it (sitting on a special storyteller's stool) as the staff acted out the current story...did I say that we wrote a new Tajar Tale for each session? The staff acting crew changed each session--there was usually one staff member that played Tajar all summer long. They were great! We all had a blast playing and performing..the folly that the Tajar got into at the beginning of each session was often referred back to throughout the session-like a big inside joke that everybody was in on. It was a great community builder.
I have also continued to tell Tajar Tales at special event campfires and events. If you have ever wondered if the campers are listening-you know from the questions and information they share with you throughout the event or weekend or session. It is not uncommon to have a very young camper give a tug to your t-shirt to get your attention and whisper to you that she saw the Tajar-and when asked what did he look like you get the answer " I forgot!!!" :confused3
Sorry this got so long, :)

[rockinsmiles]

Yeah this is new to me as well. We do have a "ghost" that haunts our camp though and is blammed for a number of things. The thing is we dont tell the campers the whole thing but some of the staff actually believe it. I try not to laugh when they say that the water pressure increased and it was due to him or other things like this.

[CAMPFRIEND]

I think that all camps have their own stories. The tails that you are talking about are new to me.

[Indigo]

I've never heard of Tajar Tales, but we have numerous ghost stories about camp. Rockinsmiles, one of our ghosts supposedly plays with the water pressure too!

[Flukie]

Hahaha. I personally love Tajar Tails. However, my campers were so confused by them. I shared with a group of 7-8th graders and they were very lost. I told them that was okay, it didn't have to make perfect sense. :)

[Skater Bubbles]

We don't really have any "Ghost stories" that I know of, and I have never heard of Tajar!