I was a bit apprehensive when I found out that one of the activities planned for Elementary 3 1995 was an all camp sleep out at the beach. For one thing, it was my first time counseling, and the idea of sleeping a few feet away from the lake kind of struck me as a safety hazard. Then there was my whole paranioa (justified paranoia, I might add) of waking up in the lake. To this day I'm surprised that nobody else thought of that. Once I got to the sleep out I found that it was even more fun than finding a home in the woods (what we used to do when I was a camper). I think that night was when I found out how cool (or should I say crazy) some of my co-counselors were. Okay, I don't want to say anything bad about Camp Michigamme, and I know I've always been one all for sticking with tradition and keeping things the same, but those tarps we use for sleeping out..........................they're not pretty. We need new ones. Or at least ones with holes in them that are less than eight inches in diameter.
We had a really awesome fire instigated by the one and only Fire Marshall Bill. Penny, shared a case of pop with us. A certain counselor who shall remain nameless kept drinking more and more pop. We warned him that the bathrooms were far, far away (across the clearing, up the hill, and past the girls' cabins), but he didn't listen and sure enough later that evening his, uh, nature called. Not wanting to make the long journey to the little boys' room, he used the little fishes' room instead. That's all I could think of the next day as I got thrown in.
There were a few other eventful happenings as well. One of my campers got sick and had to go to the bathroom. On the way she lost a few S'mores. But she woke up Jessica, who was the closest counselor on the tarp to her, to take her so I found out about this in the morning. I can't say I'm sorry she didn't wake me up instead.
The counselors sat around the fire and talked. Some of us had more fun than others (if you think I'm talking about you I probably am). It had just rained and the beach was wet, and everything got just soaked.
We didn't know the meaning of the word soaked until the next morning though. I don't know how (dew? rain? mysterious water that came out of nowhere?), but when we woke up everything was wet. The tarps, the sleeping bags, the pillows. And it was cold, too.
Before waking up to the bell, I was awaken at four in the morning to Bill singing some song. I don't remember what he sang; it was, after all, four in the morning. He certainly made that sleep out eventful.
So, that was the end of the all camp sleep out. We hauled the oh so lovely tarps up to Grace Hall, and changed out of our damp clothes. Nobody got much sleep that night with the excitement as well as Bill's sing-a-long. A kid asked me if we could sleep on the beach again that night, so they must have had fun.
One thing that I forgot to mention was that bats and bugs kept bombarding us. Another addition here, I must have been a bit crabby that morning (although I don't remember this), because recently Kelly commented that she knew I wasn't a morning person and when I asked her why she said that she just smiled and said, "The all camp sleep out."
