1. I had the caffeine shakes.

There is no caffeine at Girl Scout camp. For some reason, this was not something I was expecting when I enrolled in camp at age 11. I grew up drinking Coca-Cola like it was water, in a family that thinks it’s cute to let little kids sip your coffee at any age (for real, my mom let my 1.5-year-old nephew drink half her coffee the other day). The entire time I kept hoping maybe a lingering coffee pot would show up at dinner, dreaming of the last day of camp, when we finally got to visit the gift shop. Think of the soda I would buy! When I finally got to hit up the store, I was like, “What the fuck is this?” It was all keychains and postcards, not a soda or candy bar in sight. When I went to Bible camp the next year, I saw that they opened a snack shop every afternoon that traded sugar and caffeine for kids’ hard-earned money, and thought, “This is America.”

2. No boys.

Have you ever spent a whole week around nothing but pubescent girls? It’s not that fun.

3. They make you sing after every goddam meal.

My camp, in the northern woods of Minnesota, had a thing called “the song porch.” Let me tell you, if I end up in one of the lower circles of purgatory, it will be a “song porch.” So what happens is, you fill up on wagon wheels and milk (where tf is my McDonald’s …) and then are forced to emit sounds from your vocal chords for at least 1/2 hour and pretend to like it. As a tone deaf person who did not enjoy a chorus of pubescent kids singing “Ob-la-Di-Ob-la-Da,” it was torture. The songs we sang weren’t even camp songs – they were classic rock songs, which annoyed me in a way that I think was like a premature backlash to what is now considered “twee.”

4. Horseback riding is terrible.

Some people like to mount giant beasts with metal hooves and a penchant for apples – now known to have “murderous penises” – and ride them like bicycles. I do not like to do this. I was so cautious as a kid that it literally took me a year of figure skating lessons to learn to do a “crossover.” That’s like, when you cross one foot over the other. Kinda like walking. I also do not have the gene that encourages one to form a kinship with animals. I instead form that with computers. So when I showed up to Girl Scout Camp, where the main attraction was horseback riding, I was not pleased. I couldn’t even resort to my trick of hiding in the bathrooms because they were disgusting latrines.

5. I genuinely missed my mommy

As a kid I tried to purposely remember how I felt at given times so I could remember what it was like to be a kid when I grew into a crabby, bitter adult. What I remember is genuinely, embarrassingly missing my parents, kinda like how when an adult is on vacation they miss Netflix, or when you are on a diet you miss cheese dip. I remember thinking, “Parents … such fountains of comfort and access to forbidden coffee. If I was home right now we’d all be watching Xena together” to the point where I would tear up.

But then again … horses! Singing! Time away from parents! These aren’t bad for all kids. For some, they are genuinely desirable. Strangely enough, I had a great time at Bible camp the next year.

–Becky Lang

Photo by heraldpost