'Safe'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
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.
I had several years at a Jewish camp, and then two years at a regular camp (which was probably about 90% Jewish, but wasn't religious), and one year at performing arts camp.
I went to a Methodist church camp several years running
I was about to say I'd never stayed at a summer camp, but I did the Methodist church camp too. Ah, Jumonville, up in the mountains of Pennsylvania. I don't remember very much, aside from the view from the top of the mountain, how gorgeous the woods are, and how wretched other teenagers can be.
Girl Scout camp, two weeks (well, Tues-the next Sunday) every year from 11-15. Plus a year as a counsellor.
This one time, at crip camp... I found out it wasn't just the wheelchair that made me weird to people.