Posted on 08/06/2006 2:53:23 AM PDT by Clive
I sent my son off to church camp this year, an innocent nine-year-old boy, a little shy.
They returned to me a demented little pervert with a repertoire of filthy jokes that would make Andrew Dice Clay blush.
Not to mention three new hymns and a half dozen Bible verses.
Cool.
He'd never been to any kind of camp before. He was worried about all the normal stuff a boy would worry about before such an adventure.
Would he be homesick? Would the food be OK? Are there bears? Or, even worse, GIRLS?
I told him: A little bit. Probably. Probably not, but if you see one, all you have to do is run faster than the nearest fat kid. Yeah, but you don't have to talk to them.
He seemed relieved, but still took with him the faded and tattered blanket he's slept with for all his years, stuffed deep into the bottom of his sleeping bag so none of the other kids would see it, decide he was the weak link in the cabin and go all Lord of the Flies on him.
He also had to take a Bible, because it's a church camp.
Not our church, but one of those denominations heavy on emotion and personal witness.
We're Anglicans.
We don't do a lot of public emotion.
We find it difficult to have deep, personal relationships with our spouses and children, let alone God.
I told him if anybody asked him if he wanted to be "born again," he was to reply, politely, "Once was enough, thanks."
I didn't drive him up, leaving it to my wife, because I was afraid I'd perform an unnatural act -- like crying in front of my son -- when I dropped him off.
He thinks I'm tough and invincible and I'm going to maintain the illusion as long as possible.
No need for him to know daddy's a giant, sentimental wimp who always "gets something in his eye" when he's watching that TV show I won't let him watch because it's "too grown up and violent."
The show isn't actually "grown up and violent." I just tell him that because I don't want him to know I'm a fan of The Gilmore Girls.
When my wife came back, she told me the kids didn't call counsellors by their names. They all had nicknames. Jake's counsellor was named "Nacho."
What kind of summer camp, I wondered, was staffed by people with aliases? This was supposed to be Church Camp, not Escaped Convict Camp.
Just something else for me to worry about.
Plus, I was lonely.
When I saw a crow eating a dead mole in the alley, there was no one I could run to and say, "Wanna see something really gross?"
A nine-year-old boy replies: "Sure!" and then after he's seen it says, "That's really disgusting. Cool."
I said to my wife, "There's a crow eating a dead mole in the alley! Wanna come see?"
"Sure," she said, not even looking up from her book. "I'll go look at your dead mole right after we come back from shopping for tea towels and intimate feminine products."
"Never mind," I said.
Nobody to play catch with, watch Family Guy with, engage in contests won by whoever makes the loudest rude noise.
My only worry wasn't that he might return in the grip of some sort of strict moral code alien to our family.
No problem.
He wasn't home 10 minutes before he told his mom a joke so vile it stunned her into silence, a unique event given this is a woman who even talks in her sleep.
I asked him what else he learned at camp.
Aside from the jokes, he'd acquired certain skills essential to being nine.
He was now adept, he told us proudly, at a certain pyrotechnic event known as the Blue Angel. He also learned how to use any aerosol product and a Bic lighter to make a field-expedient flamethrower, shoot a bow and arrow and a slingshot, and pilot a kayak.
Plus, he and Nacho spent quality time knocking on the doors of the girl's cabins, mooning whoever answered and running away giggling.
"It was awesome," he concluded.
"I'm not sure this was a good idea," my wife said.
"Well," I said, "if he's not going next year ..."
"No," she said firmly. "You can't go in his place."
Darn.
-
That's interesting Clive.
2 generations of our family have gone to church camps and never had that experience. We went to Christian camps where Christ was the center of the experience.
And the "War on Christianity" continues ...
Poor kid should have kept his mouth shut...won't be going there next year.
AngelesCrestHighway: "Poor kid should have kept his mouth shut...won't be going there next year."
Cindy, I think that the boys in your family were smart enough to keep to themselves what they learned from other boys when the counselors weren't paying attention.
In fact, it is not very different from what 17 year olds learn in barracks.
This kid was particularly dumb to tell those jokes to his mother and especially to reveal the experiments on the flammability of flatulence. That probably really grossed her out.
bttt
NO CLIVE, the young men and women in our family that went to CHRIST-centered CHRISTian camps did not have that experience.
This is fiction. No names were used and it gives no information that can be verified.
Probably Just marketing for that "quasi-documentary" film ("Bible Camp"..i think that's the title) that's supposed to be coming out this year or next.
I know a bunch of younger women who work with Catholic charities and I'm always shocked to hear the crap that goes on at their camps.
probably nothing that doesn't happen at other camps, but you would expect less tawdriness
LOO...good morning...nice way to start the day...this guy's the Canadian Dave Barry.
BTW..I remember "lighting a fart" is..as we used to call it, ( gawd..it's been decades since I thought of that).... but I have to ask, I don't recognize the term "Blue Angel"..Can you perhaps explain?
Regards,
Ken
It does seem to be a slanted, weird article.
I thought this was sad, even if it was an attempt at humor: We're Anglicans. We don't do a lot of public emotion. . . . We find it difficult to have deep, personal relationships with our spouses and children, let alone God.
LOL! You must have posted just as I was drafting my #14.
I still say he's no Dave Barry, but maybe he has other material. I will give him a "nice try" for this line: "I'll go look at your dead mole right after we come back from shopping for tea towels and intimate feminine products."
All right, stop that!
IMO, allowing young kids to make moral judgement decisions and be rewarded for the correct ones or to be corrected for the wrong ones will build a better person
Absolutely. By all means, the most important advice a parent can give a child going off to a "church camp" is to immediately reject any invitation to know Christ as Savior.
Thank heavens dad remembered that vital tidbit before sending his little angel out the door. God will remember it too.
Awwwww... ain't that cute... BUT IT'S WRONG!!! ;) Cindy, I know that it's important for a mother to delude herself into believeing such things of her children, but Clive isn't necessarily wrong here. Do you think I told my parents about such things as making out with one of the girl councelors at church camp or getting sh!@ faced drunk at Boy Scout Camp with the Scout master? No, I didn't, and she wouldn't believe it either.
The kid should have kept his mouth shut, he's going to ruin a good thing. :)
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