First Camp Weekend

I wrote this on saturday so. . .. copy/paste




The Weekend of Vacation from Vacation

Last night was the first night that I had slept in the "new cabin." By new cabin I mean that it was the first night all the guy counselors had not slept in the same cabin as part of the staff training.

Oh, I should preface this by explaining how this situation occurred exactly.

In February, I decided I wanted to just go away for the summer. The first place that came to mind was Vietnam. I had heard you could just go and live on the beach for around $10 a week. So I started planning a trip to vietnam for the summer. I wouldn't take anything except clothes, money, a notebook, and a camera. But then I soon realized that the cost of the a roundtrip to Vietnam could cost over $2,000. So, I wouldn't be going to Vietnam anytime soon. Then I talked to a friend from school and she told me about how she was going to be a camp counselor. (Terrific!) So then I spent about two hours online looking around for types of camps and camp accreditations etc. Then I found campfire USA camps and decided to search by state. I found the camp I'm working at now by deciding that six hours was a pretty good distance from home.

I would just run away for the summer. Submerge myself entirely in a regimented life filled with new worries and anxieties. I would trade physical comforts for mental comforts. At 300+ miles from home, busy from sunup to sundown when would I have a thought about my parents, or my ex girlfriend, the helpless and immovable future of the world, or even my own life? The perfect plan I thought.

But, what has actually happened is quite the opposite. Instead of just running from my current issues, I have only magnified them. Meeting all the other counselors begged me to compare myself and my experiences to them and theirs. I have had to explain over a dozen times where I go to school, what I study, and why. Each time, I find myself giving a slightly difference answer. Lately, I have even admitted I don't know.

I took this job to make the money to get new deejay equipment and avoid figuring out who I am. What I am experiencing this weekend, is not what I bargained for.

So, in my assuming and ignorant thoughts about camp, it never crossed my mind that other counselors wouldn't be there on the weekends! Really!? So, when I showed up and everyone was talking about what their weekend plans were, I was baffled. I figured I would just hang out in the camp alone and read and walk around and sleep and write. But then as I thought about doing that for two nights in the middle of the woods alone, I became horrified. A few people offered their nearby homes to me on the lake. But that felt imposing and too advantageous to accept.

So instead, I took the offer of one of the junior counselors to hang out with him and his family. Thus, I am here now, writing from the comfort of his family's camper.

Hmmm, this is where it gets tricky. I never considered that I would ever want to write about someone who would actually read this. Hopefully, the person I am talking about will not find this.

Anyway, I'll sugar coat things and write as professionally as possible rather than an emotional conviction about him. He's fucking smart and fucking ignorant. While I have only known him for a few days now, I get the distinct impression academics bore him. I have heard him say he got in trouble in school a ton. His knowledge and skills lie in the practical and rational; mechanical and electrical. His knowledge of these things seems endless. But, at the same time, he is childish and naive. Perhaps this helps him solve his engineering issues and abstract technical puzzles.

I am totally against his entire lifestyle. I have lived my entire life in a conservative medium sized city with rich history and political significance. To me, this place I am in now (which I will describe shortly) and the people I am with are the definition of hillbilly's or rednecks, whichever you feel more inclined to accept.

Which, would explain why right now I am camping out with them, yet simultaneously in an air conditioned, fully furnished, and fully wired room with all the amenities of a normal house. Really? Like what is the point. Guys let's go camping in a fully modern and operational house in the middle of the woods. I'm just confused. I enjoy camping because you not only become grateful of all the things that give your life more comfort, but you also realize how dependent your schedule and life are on those comforts. You also get to experience the raw power of nature and the intricate systems of life that exist within it, that we have managed to somewhat separate ourselves from.

Anyway. . . So I got invited to a camp out for the weekend. I said "Yeah, sure, it sounds like fun," with enough fake enthusiasm to win an academy award if I was saying the same quote just before the start of a porno. But I definitely imagined hiking/tenting or something like that. Rather, what "camp out" actually meant was "A bunch of grown men hauling thousands of pounds worth of home with their wives and children into the middle of a field with their ford pickups, and making a mobile trailer park for the weekend in order to properly drink four kegs of bud light with the pig they just roasted from the back while comparing how many tv stations they get in their campers. My favorite quote so far has been, "Two doors on this bitch? You've come a long way." Seriously? No wonder people in the city make fun of this culture. . .

At the same time, I guess people of the country like to see the prospects of freedom in material goods rather than in traditional ideals and I can give some kudos to that. It's rather wasteful, but whatever.

I think for now, I am done being such an esoteric, arrogant, elitist bastard. You would think with all my lacking and knowledge of my own shortcomings and failure I could manage to at least sometimes not be a prick. Sadly, my greatest shortcoming is ironically not getting over myself. Maybe I just pretend to be interested in people, or perhaps I only deem some people worthy of being interested in. Yeah, that's it. Well, I'll work on that. Until then, I'll let karma take it's toll.