"Andy" <q> wrote in message ...
> As a pre-teen I was packed off to YMCA summer camp for a month every
> summer, 4 years in a row.
>
> Pioneer, Junior, Senior, Senior groups.
>
> The mess hall was on top of a hill. From any group to it was either a 200-
> step wooden staircase or a nice long hill climb. You got there almost
> exhausted but HUNGRY!
>
> Of course there was the wait. About 400 kids, packed tight waiting for the
> doors to open and then race to tables like it was the last meal of their
> lives.
>
> We rotated waiter (I don't remember the actual title) duties for our
> tables. You'd have to run for "bug juice" and bowls of mac and cheese
> slop,
> etc. and clear the tableware to the kitchen after the meal. Your table got
> inspected and you were OK'd to "get lost."
>
> Three times a day!!! No wonder we were skinny kids.
>
> I don't recall a food fight ever.
>
> The only bright spot at meals was for that briefest time we got to sit and
> eat with the girls! Our reason for living!!!
>
> Then after dinner, we got to go to the canteen to buy a candy bar or two
> with tickets that were issued out like "pay for slave labor," as our
> parents had cleverly dictated.
>
> Then back to the tents for the end of the day "shut up and play nice."
> Gameboy was decades in the future.
>
> Made a lot of lanyard things in those four years. The highlight was
> getting
> to watch them gas a squirrel to death with ether in the Nature hut.
>
> My original plan to escape was easily foiled by the fact that the lake
> didn't have an outlet for me to canoe out and escape the drudgeries of the
> "buddy system," 200 stairs to slop, bonfire sing-alongs and 1,001
> tetherball games.
>
> Well, that's how it went down for this camper, iirc.
>
> I wish I had kids. I'd be sending them off to summer camp right about
> now!!!
>
> Andy
>

Nah, you wouldn't like it now. Having worked a summer camp kitchen a few
years ago and seeing the new rules/regulations set up by feds/state/local
governments, it ain't what it used to be. If sweetie wants to sleep in, you
are violating his rights to do so, if he doesn't like the chow, you have to
make special just for sweetie, if he doesn't like dirt, you have to have an
air conditioned nature/craft area and an enclosed private shower/bath
facility (what ever happened to a privy), if he doesn't want to play with
the others, we have to have an opt out area just for sweetie. No wonder
today's kids are a bunch of weenies. We tell them of the fun we had in camp
then regulate the hell out of it. No thank you.
-ginny