{"id":129,"date":"2010-08-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-13T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/fearofwhales\/2010\/08\/one-last-camp-thought.html"},"modified":"2011-04-23T21:56:28","modified_gmt":"2011-04-24T01:56:28","slug":"one-last-camp-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/08\/one-last-camp-thought.html","title":{"rendered":"One Last Camp Thought"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Okay, So I know the last 3 posts have been theologically light and about TLC, but trust me, you do not want 2&#160;months&#160;full of updates about what it&#039;s like to&#160;fund-raise. And this is the last one I promise.<br \/>\nAfter what must be over 50 camps, in at least 15 different settings, and having filled more roles than anyone I know from the church side, and the camp side, as a&#160;volunteer, a camper, and a professional. There&#039;s very little that intimidates me about going to camp.<br \/>\nThis is not my first Rodeo.<br \/>\nBut although I&#039;d have no trouble signing on to be the planner, director, speaker, disciplanarian, mascott, or janitor of a camp, there is one role that I will never fill. Thankfully I&#039;m physically Ineligible, but even if i weren&#039;t, I&#039;m too scared!<br \/>\nThat role is Girls Counselor.<br \/>\nNow I&#039;ve been a counselor.. Totally. I&#039;ve been a counselor in a wheelchair, with the stomach flu, and hopping on one leg. No problem. But only for <em>Boys.<\/em><br \/>\nBoys are easy. You send em, to camp, they go crazy, they can&#039;t help but have fun, and learn, and grow, All I have to do is make sure they don&#039;t die. And It&#039;s not that hard, they&#039;re small. When you set out to quiet down a boys cabin they will probably try to stay up half the night telling fart jokes, you try to stop them, but even if you don&#039;t the problem solves itself on the second night of camp because they&#039;re&#160;exhausted&#160;from the night prior.<br \/>\nThe absolute worst case scenario in a boys cabin that I&#039;ve never run into, but hear stories about from other counselors is when they show up for the morning meeting saying &quot;Last night was horrible, my Boys tried to kill each other&quot;<br \/>\nSure, totally, it happens. But it&#039;s not the end of the world, you&#160;separate&#160;them, they cool off, crisis averted.<br \/>\nWhat&#039;s the Girls Counselor equivalent &quot;My Girls tried to kill&#160;<strong>themselves<\/strong>&quot;<br \/>\nWhat the heck are you supposed to do about that???<br \/>\nAnd that&#039;s not even a particularly bad night, from what I can tell this happens frequently.<br \/>\nI&#039;ve also seen 13 year old girls develop image issues, and eating disorders at camp, fits of unbridled, uncontrolable emotion, self mutilation&#8230; Stuff way beyond my pay grade!<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Inside a girls cabin.\" class=\"alignright at-xid-6a014e87f1cb84970d01538dfead41970b\" height=\"187\" src=\"https:\/\/fearofwhales.typepad.com\/.a\/6a014e87f1cb84970d01538dfead41970b-pi\" width=\"250\" \/><br \/>\nThe closest a boy will get to that is when he stops showering, and that can be solved two at a time with a garden hose.<br \/>\nI tip my hat to the brave souls in service to the cross who brave the dangers that lurk with in the Girls Cabins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Okay, So I know the last 3 posts have been theologically light and about TLC, but trust me, you do not want 2&#160;months&#160;full of updates about what it&#039;s like to&#160;fund-raise. And this is the last one I promise. After what must be over 50 camps, in at least 15 different settings, and having filled more&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":391,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,10],"tags":[198,197,199],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gender-roles-and-dating","category-inspiration-2","tag-camping","tag-girls-cabin","tag-voluenteer"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>One Last Camp Thought - A Fear of Whales<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/08\/one-last-camp-thought.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"One Last Camp Thought - A Fear of Whales\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Okay, So I know the last 3 posts have been theologically light and about TLC, but trust me, you do not want 2&#160;months&#160;full of updates about what it&#039;s like to&#160;fund-raise. And this is the last one I promise. 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