Is it possible to wake up cold and sweating at the same time? Even when you are not going through menopause? Well, that is how I was greeted Monday morning. I slept horribly, and not only because one of the campers woke me up at 2:30am to go to the bathroom. (This happened three out of the six nights I was there by the way.) I asked myself if it was child abuse to limit water in the sweltering heat. (No, I did not limit her water. Yes, I considered telling her that bears come out around 2am looking for tasty children.)

The day started with morning activities. These included Orthodox Life, arts and crafts, and swimming lessons. I had made an under-the-table agreement with my co-counselor that if she led all of the water activities, I would take cabin duty every night. What do I care about going to bed early? Let the youngsters have their fun and stay up late, as long as I didn’t have to get into mucky lake water. Unfortunately, when I ran this past the Water Safety Instructor, he had other ideas.  With so many campers, they needed both of us to assist. 

As we approached the water on day one, I looked over to see the Media Director. (Dammit, was that kid everywhere?) If you are familiar with my blog, you know that I have very little vanity. You have seen the terrible pictures of myself I have posted in the past. But this was going too far. I walked over to the poor kid, looked him directly in the eye and said, “There better not be one picture of me on the camp website in my swimsuit.” 

“I got you,” he said, and nodded slowly. Honestly, I don’t care if I scared him or not. 

Swim lessons were a disaster with various 8-year-olds crying and clinging to me and not wanting to go under water and thinking they were drowning. After about 15 minutes I was told I could take the criers to the shore and we were done. I happily got out of the water to dry off.  Except…I could feel an itch on my leg.  I looked down to see something black with a little blood on the back of my calf.

LEECH!! 

Oh my gosh, could this camp hell get any worse? The only positive was that this was the moment I realized that I was going to turn this whole experience into a blog and so I better start taking notes on this nightmare. 

Turns out the lake had leeches. The directors had taken steps to clear the lake by hiring “Raw Meat Robby,” a local who apparently did this for a living. He was a native of northern Michigan who showed up in his pickup truck, dog in the back, and dropped a bunch of raw meat in traps into the lake to catch the leeches.  Yes, this really did happen. No, I don’t think he caught any. Yes, I still eat meat.

After swim lessons one of my little ones who had never been to camp before looked at me and said, “How many days?”

“How many days?” I repeated to her, confused. “Until what?” 

“Until I go home.”

“Oh. Five,” I said.  And then under my breath, “Same, girl. Same.”  

Finally, we reached the end of the day. Just when I thought my responsibilities were over, I learned that a handful of the girls had never showered on their own before. Trying to manage ten girls to move quickly is hard enough; trying to do it with only five showers to work with and half of the girls not knowing what to do is unreasonable.

“Does everyone have a towel? Do you have clean underwear? Get the sand out of your hair! Wear shower shoes! Yes, you have to take a shower every day here! Listen, if you don’t let me comb your hair out I will NOT be around when your mom comes to pick you up!” 

And that was just while we were in the cabin getting ready to walk to the bathroom. Then there was the shouting of instructions from outside the shower stall:

“Now shampoo?” one would yell.

“Yes, now shampoo!” I said as I undid the cap and squeezed it out on a hand that sprang out of the shower stall.

“Now conditioner?”

“Yes, now conditioner,” I said as I undid that cap and squeezed that out on another hand.   

Finally, I got them all showered and fell into bed.

The next afternoon Franny came running up to me a little worried. 

“Mom,” she said, “you’re going to have to do the Camper Save today.”

“Ok, ” I said,” what’s that?”

“It’s when they have a drill where they pretend a camper is missing and you have to go find them.”

“Ok,” I said again, not understanding her concern.

“Mom, you have to run really fast! Around the camp! There is a time limit!” I was insulted. How feeble did she think I was? Yes, it had been a few years since I worked out or run as a form of exercise, but it wasn’t like I couldn’t participate in a simple drill. Besides, this wasn’t a life or death situation. A camper wasn’t really lost. Quite frankly, I could barely get those girls to stop asking questions or give me some personal space, fat chance one was going to be away from me long enough to get lost.

Five minutes later my niece Melina approached me, looking very stressed.  “Thea Sal,” (this is what she calls me), “you have to do the camper save today! You have to get out of it! Tell them you can’t do it!”

“Why?” I said, not quite getting why everyone was so freaked out. 

“Because, you’re OLD!!”

It was actually very sweet of them to be concerned. I mean, if I was in their place at their age and one of my aunts had to run around a camp, I would have been concerned as well. On the flip side, I also would have wanted to watch it as I don’t think I ever saw any of them run before. Moms in the 80s didn’t really run for sport so it would have been entertaining.

When it was time, I headed down to the beach where the drill was supposed to begin. We were supposed to go in pairs to check various parts of the camp for the “missing camper,” which was actually a milk jug filled with sand. Initially, I was assigned to search the field, which was the farthest you could get from the beach. I would have had to run up an inclined path made of rocks, through the whole camp, past the driveway, and to the field. Suddenly my bravado went out the window. I looked at the kid in charge and said, “I’m 56. I am not running to the field.”

Honestly, as I recount these memories and my interactions with these poor young staff members, I am lucky I didn’t get written up for bullying.

I was instead assigned the lodge and some surrounding buildings. The timer went off and we all ran. I could go into the whole mess of how I searched my buildings and didn’t find Lost Camper, yadda yadda yadda, but the short version is…I forgot to check a building and Lost Camper died on my watch. Ironically, he was in the Infirmary. I argued that in real life a nurse should have been there to help him. But it was still a fail on my part.

By Saturday I was more than ready to go home. It was a hard week, but MDSC is still as magical as it ever was. I can still see that. But if I ever decide to go back, I will have it in writing that I will be working in the kitchen. And I definitely will NOT get into the lake.