Kipworld

Alright, it’s time to catch up on this thing.

The 4th of July started with me getting wet and injured.

I woke up and called my old camp director Debbie to see what time water games would be commencing.

I can see from old Kipworld / Scrubs logs that I never talked about water games at summer camp. Maybe because I was worried at the time about getting fired.

So, here’s how water games are supposed to go. The kids come with buckets and sponges. We go to a field and play games like relay races or capture the flag with sponges. Fun is had. People get wet. Etc.

Here’s how it went down when we were in charge.

We’d take out a week of frustration by declaring all out sponge war. Kid love pelting other kids with sponges. They’d gang up on us and we would tackle them (gently!) and rub sponges on them, while yelling “Car wash!” Etc.

That’s what I was going back for.

Here’s what I got.

I arrived at Plex and saw the kids milling around the meadow. The new lead instructor was there, and a temp counselor who was floating between this camp and the one in Lake Forest. I helped Jenny keep control of the kids and said hi to a couple of them who’d been there the year before.

“I came back just to get you,” I told Cooper.

He was delighted.

We walked the kids over to Deering and I felt a pang of nostalgia for camp. I had the lead and I made sure that the kids stayed together and didn’t just run to the meadow and felt that responsible elixir filling my veins again.

We hit Deering and I vaulted the fence, not knowing that there’s a rule against that this year. The elixir ran out of my veins. Heck, I was here to have fun.

I didn’t want to overstep my bounds, since I didn’t know how camp dynamics worked this year. However, it seemed that the kids just weren’t listening (big surprise, it was hot, and there were buckets of icy water just waiting, beckoning, to be unleashed). So I asked Jenny if I could and then stepped up and yelled the rules. It was definitely coming back to me.

The cup race wasn’t as much fun as the cup races we put on. See, a kid holds a cup on his or her head and the team members run down the field with a sponge to fill the cup. The way we played, the running kid would then take the cup and the holding kid would run back, but Jenny set it up so that the holding kid stayed until the cup was empty. It took away that nervous “Am I gonna get the full cup on my head” feeling away, since the holding kid knew they were going to get it. But hey, I’m not complaining.

Then came capture the flag. I got totally injured here. I was trying to rally my side into a run and one of the kids on the other side totally had my number as soon as I crossed the line. I kept going though, and when he threw, I ducked and rolled. Unfortunately, I came up with a case of road rash on my right arm (see the Bull and Bunny strip about arm injuries).

Then came sponge war.

The kids were like a rolling mob. Usual. I readied myself and then I realized that the counselors who were back for another year, Jon and Joey, were not back for this sponge war. Debbie was gone (taking a kid to be picked up early). It was just Jenny and Bryan and Jeff and I. I didn’t really know them. I had no protection. No problem, I thought to myself. These kids don’t know me. They’ll target their teachers.

Nope. They went after me.

I held my own, but through sheer force of numbers, they got me. They got me good. I held up on my promise to get Cooper. The kid who caused my road rash got a tackle and a carwash. I had to be really careful, since I wasn’t even an employee, so hurting a kid could not be healed by giving out raffle tickets or anything.

It was fun. Sorta.

And that’s the thing. I went back for their closing times and saw that summer camp just isn’t the same as it used to be. The counselors were all a bit frazzled, that was the same, but they just didn’t have the same cameraderie as we enjoyed last year. Maybe it’s because we were all overnight counselors, I don’t know.

I remember complaining all the time last year about how work kept me from my friends (the 614 crew), since I had to work 24 hours a day. But really work was being with a new set of friends, constantly.

You can’t duplicate summers. They are each their own. Unique facets. And you don’t realize what they were until much later.