J.K. Rowling's made reading cool and fun again, which is awesome.

I think one of the most disturbing things I ever saw while working at the bookstore was when a teen around 15 years old was standing at the counter buying a book. Some of his friends apparently saw him from outside the store and came in to harrass him for doing something so dorkish as to actually buy a book for reading, and one that wasn't required for school. He wasn't shamed by it, but I told his buddies that someday he was going to be their boss. They blew me off, but I still think about them and wonder if they ever learned their lesson.

I can't fathom thinking that reading made me a dork. What made me a dork in school (and even now, actually) is that I'm a geek about the subject matter and tend to pull a Cliff Clavin at the drop of a hat. (I was able to correct my sister on some details after we saw RotK together by quoting the timeline in the appendix, and she just shook her head and said, "You're such a dweeb." My very mature reply was "Nyah, nyah, nanahnyah!" Yes, we are approaching middle age.)

That'll be a cool memory for a lifetime.

And five to ten for the counsellors who get tried for the child abuse.

I don't know what you're talking about... but you guys do know that you don't always fall to the ground after being shot, right? Drunk or stoned people, who don't know they're shot, mostly remain upright...David Simon says we get that from the "argh...I've been hit!" moments in the movies. I hate when people get obsessed with stuff, though. You're right. Geeks.

Man. I was a hardcore bookworm as a kid, but...waking me up before dawn? I might've stubbornly refused to read teh book for a few days, just out of bitterness!

And five to ten for the counsellors who get tried for the child abuse.

Is that hardcore for camp? I'd always imagined it had stuff like that, except instead of reading there's cold lakewater or something.

Signed,
Went To Tech Camp, And Didn't Sleep Over.

I remember camp wakeup as normally being not too long after dawn, anyway. And there were usually one or two things during the summer where they woke us up early for something.

We didn't get woken up before dawn at camp when I was a kid, but we did have the occasional night where we never went to bed. We'd set up our sleeping bags on a big hill and watch the falling stars all night. I loved that. I was probably cranky and 'skeeter bit as hell the next day, but I don't remember that part at all. Lovely thing, selective memory.

Did a lot of people on this board attend summer camp as kids? Because I didn't know anyone who did while I was growing up. I went to a few week-long camps (4-H, mostly), but that was it.

I spent 2 summers at a Jewish sleep-away camp. (Which was mostly like regular sleep-away camp, except we had Shabbat services and Hebrew school in addition to the regular arts & crafts / color war stuff.)

Some parts were fun (kicking the boys' collective asses in kayaking during color war, for example), but I was never much for teen girlish bonding, and so the living in a cabin with 14 other 11 year-olds part was about as close to torture as I've ever experienced.

I went to a Methodist church camp several years running. It only lasted 10 days each summer. Still, there was swimming, hiking, canoing, singing, and mud fights in the peat bog. All in all, pretty fun.