My Favorite All-Time Camp Moment

[Dave]

I'm pretty sure this was my favorite camp moment of all time. It's a little thing, but it meant so much. This story happened two summers ago, my first year as a camp counselor. (I just pasted this from my website so it has a little message attached to the end of it.)


It was the third week of camp and it was one of those excessively hot days. Like my other counselors, I had little patience, little tolerance, and I wasn't really in the mood to be at camp that day. We were at basketball. The courts we played at had really low baskets because they were for little kids. Anyway, me and my senior counselor were standing around at one of the baskets talking. We both had a ball. One of our kids walked over. He wanted us to pick him up so he could do a slam dunk. (Obviously they weren't really slam dunks. We'd give the kids a ball and we'd pick them up and they'd put the ball in the basket and hang on the rim.) We weren't really in the mood to but we did it anyway. I gave him my ball and I picked him up and he "slam dunked". And when he was hanging on the rim he started cracking up. He was laughing so much. He must've really been enjoying himself. Well me and Eugene (the S.C.) looked and we saw him laughing. We both got the biggest smiles on our faces. It cheered us up so much! If I had a video camera with me, I definitely would've recorded it. In fact, I'd have to say that it was my best camp moment. I really felt good when I saw him laughing.

It was at that moment that I realized what it meant to be a camp counselor. It's not about the money or the free food. I didn't do the job so I'd get out of the house during the day. The job isn't really about you at all. It's all about the kids. We're there to make sure our kids have the best summer possible. And that moment was just one of those times where I felt I was doing just that. Unless you experience something like this yourself, you can't really appreciate the feeling I got. But let me tell you, it was great. I'd give anything to relive that moment again.

[CAMPFRIEND]

Dave- Great story. It's so great just the small things like when a campers smiles how it can bring joy. I think that we all have a story just like yours.

[collissimon]

That's cute! It's those moments though that make all the crappy stuff (like getting up at 0715 every morning all summer!) worth while :D

[ocean]

that is so cute

[Dave]

Yeah that was one of those days I just didn't feel like being at camp. But that cheered me (and my senior counselor) up so much. He ended up being one of my "favorites".

[Whimsy]

My favorite memory from camp has to be after closing campfire my CIT year. Our group sat around while the fire burned low while our directors read some beautiful quotes to us and then one of our directors who had been a CIT years before took out a little film canister with ashes in it. Turns out they were from the closing campfire of her CIT year. She put them in the ashes with ours so that they would mix together, symbolizing that we were one. Then the next morning before we went home we each got our own film canister with the ashes from the previous nights fire. That summer was our directors last summer at camp and my CIT group never fully came back as one big group again. So that film canister holds my summer as a CIT in it.

"It has one breath of a butterfly and one ray from the sun
And lots and lots of laughter from little children's fun
So please do not uncork it or everything will get away
And I want you to have your own summers day...
Put it on away."

[runrachrunn]

My favorite memory from last summer comes from the last day of camp. The GTA had torential rains, winds and hail, and the power repeatedly went out just as we were trying to pack up the facilities and get the kids home. When the power came back on, the fire alarms went off, and the building engineer told us that we had to evacuate them, LOL. (If you were in the GTA on August 19th, you'll understand why it's funny). Anyways, I ended up running outside with a walkie-talkie to try and direct traffic which was totally backed up because we couldn't get any kdis out the door. All I remember is the director's umbrella flying out of his hand and across the street, and me being SOAKED from top to bottom, and then slipping and falling as soon as I walked back into the building because my clothes were dripping.

[ocean]

My favorite camp memory from last summer probably had to be when a little girl in my unit wrote a poem about me. Since my camp name is ocean, you will understand it and she was only 6 years old, so its very cute.

Oceans are blue
Oceans are wavy
And oceans are very very very pretty
Just like Ocean


This was such a cute poem. She was a stubborn camper, but for some reason, she loved me, and opened up to me.

[collissimon]

That's cute! Don't you just love the difficult ones?!?

[ocean]

That's cute! Don't you just love the difficult ones?!?

Yea I do,in the end, they always find a way for you to like them dont they?

[collissimon]

They wiggle their way into your heart!

I had one last summer, who was a biter, and would hurt himself when he went into a meltdown... he was quite challenging to deal with when it happened, but he was also a lovely kid! I got an email from him at Christmas to tell me what he was hoping for!!

[ocean]

They wiggle their way into your heart!

I had one last summer, who was a biter, and would hurt himself when he went into a meltdown... he was quite challenging to deal with when it happened, but he was also a lovely kid! I got an email from him at Christmas to tell me what he was hoping for!!

wow he sounds a bit challenging, but that is really cute that he emailed you with what he wanted for christmas.

[collissimon]

He was quite challenging when he went into meltdown, but was lovely otherwise, which was what made it so difficult!

I just hope he got what he wanted :D

[CAMPFRIEND]

Will you see him this summer?

[collissimon]

I think he's coming back, but I probably won't be his counsellor. Some times I like seeing them around, because I can chat with them and don't have to deal with the behaviour :D

[CAMPFRIEND]

It will be intreasting to see how he has changed over the past year. I hope the camp experience from last summer made his a better person.

[collissimon]

We'll see, I hope as he gets older he'll be able to control his behaviours better and better, and be the lovely camper he is all the time :D

[CAMPFRIEND]

I love to see campers grow over the years! For some of them they might work at camp someday.

[Melk]

I love to see campers grow over the years! For some of them they might work at camp someday.

like me!

[Lilbit88]

For me it's not a moment persay..but it's the moment I realized I had more stregnth then I realized, I was worth is(and I didn't need to be doing things I was), and I finally began to love myself...Melk, your someone who's helped me throughout the way(through raggers)...thank you

[rivapete]

Awesome stories. This is one of my favorite memories at camp. It just happened that my nephew was a camper this week and it was raining all week. The counselors didn't know what to do with the kids anymore. They were just plain boring. By the dining hall, we have this huge dirt pit (used for hockey or whatever). Anyway, by this time, the pit was just flooded. It was about 30 minutes before lunch, I went to my nephew's cabin and told the counselors to have the kids put on their swimsuits and wetshoes. I then told the kids to follow me and to do EVERYTHING I did. So, I was just running and stomping through the puddles and when I got about 20 feet from the "pit" I stopped and waited for everyone to catch up. I told them to follow me and I just ran to the pit and did a head dive into the pit. For about 10 minutes we were having a mud fight. And then the dinner bell rang and we went into the dining hall a complete mess laughing and dripping. All the other counselors and campers were just staring at us like we were nuts. Well maybe we were

[shermanator]

I have a couple of really good memories from being a counsellor over the last 10 years. The first one comes from the year 1999 a whole bunch of us wanted to do something special for our kids so we decide to become like the backstreet boys. We called our selves the Bear Street Boys because our unit is called the bear unit. What we did was we improvised dance moves to a whole bunch of their songs and the kids went nuts they were really excited and enjoyed every minute of it and it was so much fun to become them even if it was only for about an hour. My second memory and probably one of my favorites would be i was supervising kids at a golf course and this one child wasn't happy with the way he was putting and was yelling and shouting and just acting badly. His friend saw how upset he was and gave him his candy to make him feel better. I was so impresed and proud i nearly cried.

[Marzz]

I have lots of favorite camp moments, but the freshest in my memory was this summer when one of my campers mothers told me that she caught her daughter crying in her room when they returned home from camp. When she asked what was wrong, the camper said she missed Marzz. Totally melted my heart when I heard that.

[Flukie]

My first year on staff at Fav, I had a rough summer. It's hard to move from a camp you grew up at to another camp that is steeped in traditions. It's also hard to go from being well-known and rather well-loved to being the one that "changes everything". In the middle of a pretty long session, I received a letter from a camper at my home camp. In it she wrote:

"Every year at final campfire for the last three summers, I've wished that you would come back to us and be our counselor again. I know now that you are very happy where you are and though we miss you, you probably aren't going to come back. I only hope your campers now know how lucky they are and how very much you are missed."

Totally made me bawl - and made getting through the rest of that session much easier. The second summer was amazing, and I have no doubt the third will rival it. What a difference we make though, we may never know.

[Giggles]

I remeber this week when I was a Day Camp Assistant. There was this little boy who had the hardest time keeping sticks on the ground and following the other rules. I had to constantly be on the lookout for this boy and he was really difficult. I didn't go home each night and say good things about him or anthing, I was just annoyed. But then on Friday, after closing ceremony he found me as I was leaving and came up to me. He gave me a big hug and told me I was his favorite counselor ever! I was soo excited and it was soo cute, but I was baffled. I hadn't done anything specail for him at all. All I ever did was tell him to stop doing things! It was then and there that I realized that kids need and respect boundaries and love you even more for setting and following boundaries. Oh my goodness that kid!

[Giggles]

Oh, even though the best part of this memory came years later, it still warms my heart. I had a camper my first week as a DCA, when I was like 13 years old and had only been baby-sitting for like 2 years. I rode the camp bus and so did she. We sat together everytime. Well, on Wednesday as we were walking from the parking lot to the meadow the counselor came up to me and told me that this girl was crying and he couldn't get her to tell her what was wrong. So I took her aside and she evetually told me that she wantedto go home because she hated our counselor. She said he was mean. I didn't really get why she thought he was mean, and I didn't see it, but whatever. So in my head I am thinking, "what the heck do I do? I can't tell the counselor because that would be awkward and scary." (It was afterall my 3rd day at this!) So I asked her if we could talk to another counselor to talk to and she picked one. He told me to talk to the DC director so we did, after telling our counselor that we would meet up with him at the next activity (oh the days when a DCA could just take one camper somewhere without taking another camper!) So basically the DCD told her that she had to stay the rest of the day. She basically cried like all day. The next day I totally didn't expect to see her, but there she was! and she came on Friday too!! I was sooo excited! but I thought that it was due to one of my fellow DCAs who would come over and hang with us when she could and she made the kid laugh. Well, apparently, my mom and the girl's mom were talking on Friday afternoon and the mom told my mom that the reason her daughter had come back for the rest of the week was because of me!!!!!! I was really really touched and it warms my heart even now, 6.5 years later!

[jdcounsellor]

I work in day camps and run the gymnastics camp. To keep the kids occupied one rainy day (after running out of games to play) we started playing music and they just danced all over the floor. When we stopped the music they would all have to freeze. One boy who hated everything about camp (and drove us insane all summer) surprisingly played this game. He was only 5 at the time, but he tried every break dancing move he could think of. We all could barely stand up we were laughing so hard, it was hilarious. By the end of the summer he had mastered the sprinkler, the shopping cart and the microwave and put on a show for all the other camps. We recorded it and all still watch it constantly and laugh histerically every time.

[Strand]

When the counselor's put on skits for the kids.

We based it off of a Red Green bit, with a touch of Benny Hill. I was the narrator with Doug, Ed, and Nick(fellow counselors) ad libbing it out. The audience gave us a person, place and a situation. It was a broken car in the woods, the they meet up with a hobo. So Doug and Nick are the occupants in the car and Ed is the hobo. here is how it went out:

So it looks like Doug and nick are having a great time. It looks like they just from a good movie. No, not a good movie a great movie. A funny movie! *Doug and Nick laugh* No, it was a sad movie *Doug and Nick cry.* No, a scary movie. *Doug and Nick hug each other in fear.* No it was a scary movie with a sad beginning and a funny end. *Doug and Nick look at me shaking there fist.* Sorry guys, back to the story, They are traveling down the road listening to Britney Spears. *They start to sing *Ops I did it again.* and then suddenly there car starts to stall. I mean this is a really broken car, the car is shaking, the car is rocking back and forth. It's as if the engine is about to tear itself loose and rocket 100 feet into the air. *Doug and Nick and jumping out of there chairs. Doug has a great idea, maybe while the car is still moving, he can clime out of the car onto the hood, open it and see what the problem is. *Doug climes onto the table ans pretends to surf.* Suddenly the breaks lock up! *Doug flies off of the table onto the stage.* No, never mind, that was Nick, he was just being mean and slamed on the breaks. *Nick waves.*

[ARam_Kelp]

I have so many just from my two years as a CIT.

My favorite for my one week as an apprentice counselor last year.
CIT 2s got invited back for as staff for the second half of the summer last year. I went back during night week which was rough because we were understaffed because several staff were on vacation that week, and counselors and CITs have to be camp appropraite arround eachother so it was kind of awkward getting involved in staff conversations because they would still try to stay CA around me. Also everyone was busy and lights out was at 1AM, so people were cranky not to mention the other staff in my unit were asleep when I was up because half of us had to wake up at 8 to field campers who got up early.

On Wendsday night of this week we had race for boats made of cardboard and duct tape. All the counselors knew it would come down to swimming because the boats never last; I was considered the major competitor because I swim competatively. When we got to the lake that evening almost every other unit had tiny boats that could be pulled easily while I had a giant hunk of cardboard. I did fairly well getting to the dock where we had to get our boat out of the water grab an unamed object belonging to our unit (other than the fact that I took out half the floating candles that were path markers and lost both of the crocs I was wearing). I got there second but the doc was high enough and my mass of soggy cardboard was heavy enough that almost everyone else past me as I was trying to get my boat on the doc( during this I kicked the doc and cut up my foot pretty badly). After I did finally manage to get the boat up there I swam the wrong way around the doc so that I couldn't get up on the ladder and had to go all the way around the doc. Next I couldn't find the obvious object (I am very nearsited and wasn't wearing glasses), which happened to be another counselor. Once she finally got my attention we got in again and wound up finishing 4th out of 5. Afterword as I was putting up the lifejacket I had to wear for the event, I walked into one of the huge stumps at our camps boating doc.

As I walked back to my campers every frustration I felt that week built up and I was on the verge of tears, but I of corse kept smiling and trying to be cheerful. When I got there all the kids were really worried about me. Of course when I said I was alright, one the kids asked are you sure, 'cause you're bleeding, and about 5 flashlights were pointed at my knee where I had walked into the stump.

After getting cleaned off I lead a fast forced march back to our unit where I had to bolt into my cabin to regain control so I didn't cry in front of the campers ( I left the other wet counselor watching them) , and changed out of my bathing suit. I couldn't go take a shower because all the other staff in my cabin had the night off, so I went back unit shelter and got our bedtime snack organized.

Here's the part that makes it my favorite. The kids had trail mix which happened to contain MMs. When I was doning making sure all of the kids had a juicebox almost everykid there came up to me and offered me giant handfuls of MMs that they'de picked out of their trail mix. It was so sweet and it made everything else that week so much better.

[Giggles]

awwwww! That's cute!!

[Cocoa]

umm...there's so many

one girl got hit in the eye and spent the rest of the afternoon with a piece of salami on her face because she didn't have a steak

[Smudge]

hehe! that is funny - i dropped a tent platform on my finger last summer and ended up spending the afternoon with ice on my finger!

[ARam_Kelp]

Sort of cheating, but this one is way shorter.
When my CIT group graduated part of the ceremony was putting on staff shirts, which happened to be polos. I was the first person to get their's on so I got to watch as everyone else forgot to unbutton their shirts and got stuck. The ceremony lost some of it's seriousness after that.

[Smudge]

Hehe!

When our CITS graduate they get mortar boards and balloons!

[Giggles]

When we graduate we get a little mini version of the staff tie to put on our CIT tie (same thing, different fabric), a certificate, and a gift from our CIT director. I loved it!! Then I got to come back a week later and get a real staff tie and a staff shirt!!! woohoo!