out with a whimper

Welp, camp is over.

These past couple weeks were blurred by a lack of personal space and an excess of yellow food- I was never able to finish a rubber Sysco omelet without at least two toothy campers trying to pants me at the table, or choke me dead during a sit-down piggy-back ride- so it kind of flew by in that "fuck i'm tired when will this end" sort of way.  But the best summer of my average life is nearly done and I didn't even cry so I'm obviously made of stone (seeing as I cried two weeks ago when I learned that pizza was for dinner, it's clear that my priorities are way out of line).  Perhaps it was the promise of eating vegetables some time in the near future that kept me from sob-drooling all over the final campfire, or maybe it was the stomachache from the previous night's bean-chugging competition that prevented me from feeling anything at all.  Either way, I held my shit together, and that's a phrase I've never used.

I guess when it came down to it, I just didn't have the time to get sappy.  Up until the last minute at camp, I was racing from cabin to cabin, scrambling to find a camper's hat that I'd lost.  The hat belonged to Tatumn's (a blonde nine year old who insisted on climbing any and all adults in the room) stepmother, a 22 year old Russian named Katya.  Thank god it turned up, I don't have the shoulder strength to defend myself against a mail-order bride from Kiev.

During this last session, I had yet another group of 4th-5th graders, half of which struggled with illegal levels of dumb.  Unfortunately, Great Scott and I were split up for these last two weeks, a decision made by the support staff in an attempt to "switch things up" and "challenge ourselves to work with other people".  Due to this horrific idea, I was left to torture my new co-counselor RJ with talking about how great Scott is for two weeks.  Which was unfair, considering RJ is an incredibly interesting human being.  The dude is an EMT and golf child-prodigy, with an unhealthy obsession for driving fast cars and arguing that motorcycles are safer than minivans. I'm eternally thankful for his insistence on taking "counselor time" a few times a day, which meant hiding in tents and eating secret trail mix, but I still missed workin with Scotch Tape on the daily.  If RJ wasn't so committed to being sober and healthy all the time, I'd buy him a million beers.  By the way, at the staff banquet, Glass of Scotch and I were awarded the "Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen Award" for being attached at the hips with killer fashion sense. So.  

Despite my ungrateful, ass-faced demeanor, I'm gonna miss a lot about camp.  Predictably, I'll miss dancing on dirt roads with Larry, sleepovers in the theatre haunted by taxidermic mountain lions, and participating in campfire skits that only the counselors find funny ("yoogle," google search results acted out in real time).  But most of all, I'll miss our dear Chef Norman openly griping about his hemorrhoids at logistics meetings. Few things bring me greater joy than that man's behavioral choices.  I'll never forget hearing about the time when Norm entered the dining hall to announce breakfast and shouted, "Today we have eggs and bacon.  Daaaaaaamn!" to a crowd full of appalled twelve-and-unders.

It'll be annoying re-adjusting to life with regular(ish) showers and without "Baby Shark" verses sprinkled throughout my day.  Can't say that I'm looking forward to it.  There's no doubt I've changed quite a bit since May.  I now think farts are funny, I wear at least five bracelets on each wrist, I have an almost-tan from giving up sunscreen halfway through the summer, and a half-formed dread on the right side of my head from a lack of personal hygiene. I also lost all interest in pursuing comedy as a career, which I realize may only be temporary, but as of now, I'll claw my eyes out before you can convince me to write a shitty sketch about Kooky Astronauts on July 4th with a bunch of other assholes in a windowless room.  So fingers crossed this whole Move To Boulder And Continue Converting Into a Flirty Tree plan works out, because I've found what I want to do.  I wanna camp forever.  I love this.  With dirty fingernails and bug bites all over my ass, I've had more fun these past few months than I've had ever.  I'm happy, and I'm terrified of being a sick and miserable student clad in faux fur in the city again.  I'm scared shitless that returning to Columbia, resuming everything I placed on pause over a year and a half ago, will reverse all the progress I've made on being a positive, relatively put-together person.  Colorado works for me.  For whatever reason, in this state and this state only, I have an unusual amount of patience for all sorts of idiots, I get offered jobs at REI by charming zipliners, and handsome blondes go out of their way to flirt with me WHY FUCK WITH THAT

But wow, I don't want to waste any time here stressin or biting my nails until they bleed- that's lame.  I've got big mountains to look at and Leah's to eat chocolate stuff with.

SEE YA, GONNA GET NAKED AND DRUNKISH AND SWIM SOMEWHERE,

Kay

P.S. I'm not heading home until august 20th, which gives me some time to bounce around colorado with some of my favorites for a while; I'm not sure what we're doing, but I know that we're goin to sand dunes and hot springs and we'll be climbin some mountains and i'm so excited how am i this lucky