My First Two Weeks Extracted From the Routines of Everyday Civilized and Modern Living

Now I'm spending most of the summer away from civilization, so I'm a little behind on the things I need to talk about.  Bear with me.

The two weeks from the 28th of May to the 11th of June were very eventful ones indeed.  I began and completed my training as a camp counselor, became intimately acquainted with the scent of rotting cabbage mingling with the odor of profusive sweat, and rolled out of a plane 13,500 feet above the Earth’s surface.  Guess which one I want to talk about first?  That’s right: it’s the cabbage.

Now the cabbage wasn’t exactly part of our training, as surprising as that might be.  It was more of a break, as weird as that sounds.  What we did is called “gleaning”, which is a new term for me, so I’m going to arrogantly assume it is for you as well.  It means that a farmer permits you to drive onto his land, pick nearly over-ripe cabbage, throw said cabbage all over the place, sing loud obnoxious camp songs, and somehow eventually get the cabbage onto a truck. 

The other remarkable part of this adventure was the ride there and back.  There are about 30 of us, and we had to get up frighteningly early to go all the way to Youngsville for this cabbage encounter.  We were split among 5 mini-vans, and there was a walkie talkie in each car.  Our cars also have code names, so the drive was epic.  My car was code-named "Holy Grail" and we followed closely behind "Donald". (Not all code-names are created equal.)  It was like a very car chase-heavy super spy movie, kind of like The Italian Job, except with more vegetables.  And no gold.  And all the guns and bombs were replaced by goofy ridiculous songs that involve lots of random dancing.  And instead of weaving through congested inner-city traffic in mini-coopers, we drove in an organized line of mini-vans in primary colors, patiently keeping at or around the speed limit for the majority of the ride.  But that’s just nitpicking; the vegetables were the real distinguishing characteristic. 

The rest of training was also awesome.  You could make a movie about the epic and feel-good way the 30 of us came together as a happy community.  You would also want to include all of the many hiccups and tragic setbacks and dramatic confrontations that slowed us down but inevitably couldn’t prevent us from bonding as a strong family, and instead only served to create an even more beautiful culmination of our friendships into secure communal ties.  (If only every conflict in the world was followed with a huge group hug between all those involved, I am convinced that there would be no ill will.  It helps if at least one of the people in the circle is soaking wet and or teary.  They should probably be at the center of the hug for maximum effect.)  I don’t think it has the potential to make a very successful movie – or even a  very good one – but I am still fairly sure that it *could* be made into a movie.  Like for real.

Training also helped to dispel some of the misconceptions I had about camp life.  I was under the delusion that somehow camp counselors had lots of spare time to write music, draft a couple novels, study Paradise Lost, sketch flowers, fill notebooks with poetic musings and wistful lyrics about birds, and finger-paint, but it turns out that this is a falsehood.  I am tempted to curse Henry David Thoreau and joke about how Walden gave me the wrong idea about living in a cabin surrounded by nature, buttttt I am not familiar with Thoreau’s work, so that would be false and unfair to Thoreau's legacy.  I have only myself to blame. 

It turns out that camp counselors have very little spare time.  That doesn’t mean that their time isn’t filled with awesome goofiness and fun kids and music and ridiculous skits and laughter, but it does mean there is not a wealth of alone time with which to contemplate life, the universe and everything. (new idea: try to sneak in as many Douglas Adams’ book titles in one post as possible) In fact, you are tempted to use all of the spare time that *could* be used to broaden your literary horizons to just hang out with your fellow counselors or simply prepare for campers/SLEEP.  That’s the other thing: when you get to your spare time, you’re usually far too exhausted to read more than a couple lines of Georges Bataille’s fascinating if a little dense and obviously insane metaphysical rambling on the subject of religious theory before you lapse into a deep and restful slumber, riddled with surreal hallucination/dreams about being turned into a goat and sacrificed to temporarily free your owners from the world of the discontinuous and allow them into the world of spirits. (Much like coffee and Taco Bell, Bataille is not recommended when you are preparing for bed.)  So much of your energy is expended during the busy day that at the end of the night you are drowsy, lazy, delusional, and mostly harmless. (Abort. It seems Douglas Adams wrote an inordinate amount of books.)

Another revelation I had during training was that all the counselors here are awesome.  Like fantastic.  And hilarious.  Every day is filled with laughter and really weird but insightful humor.  Everyone has their own unique talents and quirks, and I look forward to a lot of time on the weekend relaxing and hanging out with them.  Here’s a couple of the things I’m especially looking forward to:

• Late night talks about morality and evil in the world, because those are fun.
• Back massages,  because they’re awesome.
• Jamming with the Agape band, because-there-are-so-many-people-with-so-many-instruments-and-I-love-it-asjdlkjfkdl;
• Forming a step team, because it seems like a fun thing to do.

Oh right, I should probably talk about rolling out of a plane...   Next time!