Blue Lake Camp

Every summer, from the time I was eight years old until I was fourteen years old, I would beg my parents to send me to Blue Lake Camp. This was a church camp, but not a preachy church camp. It was non-denominational, and besides the 30 minutes of a bible story, and some odd "prayer songs" at meals (God come down in sort of a twist and give me french toast the size of my fist...that seriously was one of the prayers!), and being told whenever I did something really bad that I would burn in hell, it was not all that churchy.

There were no parents. There were no major rules...until some of us were so bad, they started enforcing some.

The bathrooms were scary. The walls were made of knotty pine, which was not good since the girls bathroom was on the other side of the wall. Us boys would have slivers in our noses from peeking thru the knot holes. Saw my first booby and lost a lot of sleep that night. Scarier than all those ghost stories by the camp fire!

I was dared to run to one of the other cabins, hit it and run back. This was during "quiet" time when everyone could take a nap or go on a nature walk with a buddy. Not to be called a chicken, I did it. And on the way back to the cabin, some girls came around the corner and they scared me. Oh, and did I forget to mention I was dared to do this nude? Almost got sent home that year early.

One of the kids, Fred, was always so much smarter that all of us other troublemakers. Fred was convinced that the girl camp counselor was having sex with the boy camp counselor named Patrick. Since Fred was so smart, he felt Patricks sleeping bag and it was wet. The bed is wet because the girls pee their panties when they have sex. Scarred me for life. But the story continues...

Since the girl counselor was now pregnant, we kept looking at her stomach the rest of the week at camp. We knew that we could see her belly getting bigger by the hour. I told Fred and my other cohorts in crime that I saw the baby kick. Didn't take long for the pregnancy story to get back to Patrick and the unfortunate bloated girl counselor. One of the rules that you don't cuss was thrown out the cabin window when Patrick started yelling at us. We cried and hid under our bunkbeds until Patrick left for a cigarette. Fred told us that Patrick was upset because it was really true, but to keep our mouths shut. And like true boys, we kept the story going.

Fred always got me into trouble. That butt-head. Nice to hear that when you grew up, Fred, you and your wife became manager and cook of a greasy spoon restaurant that serves cold burgers and limp salads. Loser. Hope that you can upgrade to a double-wide trailer once you pay off that 1975 Pinto.

And I hope your wife pee's in ya'lls bed.