FINE

Fine. OK?! FINE. YOU GOT ME.  Camp is perfect, my anxiety was for nothing, Windy Peak is a dream, and my co-counselors are all cooler, better looking, and more interesting than me.  I have a crush on each and every one of them.  

Being happy is like, the loveliest punch in the gut.  At any moment I could throw up a blanket of butterflies and feather boas.  I don’t know why I was given this job, but I feel like the luckiest little suburban bean to be here, huddled in the corner of my cabin with smelly socks and scuzzy teeth.  This place is actually the coolest, and these losers already feel like family.  Isn't that obnoxious?

This week was staff training.  Seven flawless days of camp for grown ups.  I literally spent the entire week getting paid to sing campfire songs and wolf down brownies.  Each day was dedicated to going over and practicing everything we’d be teaching about our core sports, with the occasional light-hearted Don't Sexually Abuse The Children chat sprinkled in the arts and crafts room. We make bracelets! Don't touch kids! At the week’s end, I still wouldn’t say that I know as much about hugging rocks and kissing soil as the other counselors, who were seemingly all raised by trees and L.L.Bean, but I’m prepared enough to teach these little slime-monsters what they’ll want to learn.

However perf this week was, lapping up sunscreen and crumping my way through icebreakers, I still managed to fuck up royally on more than one occasion.  I managed not to bring soap or chapstick, turning my lips into a dirt-dusted blood bath, and my right arm (ONLY my right arm) is riddled with bug bites.  If I weren't already a perfect 10, I'd be a 9.5.

But the real fun was Monday night, the second day of training, when the entire staff camped out along the shore of Lake Wellington.  Being from California, I wasn’t aware that Rocky Mountain nights were less hospitable to human life than a gutted chicken in a freezer locker.  Within two hours of falling asleep, I woke up shivering violently, with no feeling in my face.  Of course my pathetic sleeping bag and jeans + tee combo wasn’t enough to keep me warm while lying like an idiot log on the wet grass with only a tarp in between.  For a very long and dramatic twenty minutes that I was sure were my last, I dressed myself in every piece of clothing I could fit onto my body while squatting in a nylon tent hovering over three other counselors, managing to squeeze on two pairs of shoes (water shoes inside hiking boots thank you very much) while waking no one.  I then dragged what was left of myself into one of the camp’s official 15 passenger vans, where I rocked back and forth in the fetal position for an hour just to feel again.  

Obviously I survived through the night. And thank god I did, otherwise I wouldn’t have had the chance to, just two nights later, have a sex dream featuring one of my coworkers while we all slept together, the chef, nurse, bosses and all, in one room.  Obviously I woke up terrified that I had said his name, or anything at all, in my sleep.  And although nobody ever hinted that anything had happened, I still don’t feel safe.  I’m almost 100% certain that every single one of those bastards is in on a joke at my expense. I should leave.

Goofs aside, it’s spooky how quickly I've adjusted to the whole “always running around in the sun” thing. I didn’t expect that by the third day, when given an hour of free time, that after just three minutes of sitting on my bed scrolling through Facebook, I would become so incredibly bored and uninterested in the screen in front of me, that I'd spitefully toss my phone beneath my pile of granola bars and go to the bike tent to practice changing tires. If you think THAT'S dumb, imagine how stupid I felt when I found myself wishing for a 5:30 AM wake-up call so I could get outside early enough to catch a picture of the morning mist coming off the mountains. Where do I get off acting like such an asshole?

Camp starts tomorrow morning, which means I'll actually have to like, keep a group of eight 4th and 5th grade children alive and entertained for the next two weeks.  I feel nothing.

Good God,

Kay

P.S. I’m so drunk on sunshine I'm not even mad about the gel-like meat grease coating all of our dinner plates.  If you haven’t yet tried day-old lamb fat infused oranges, I highly recommend it before you brush your teeth HAPPY FATHER'S DAY