The Worst Summer Camp Ever | Teen Ink

The Worst Summer Camp Ever

October 23, 2017
By Anonymous

I love camping. That was why I was super excited for my camping trip to Oljato with my Boy Scout Troop. However, my experience there left a permanent mark on me that would make me enjoy camping a little bit less forever. Oljato is a summer camp, and we would stay there for a week. We had to drive for forever to get there. I think it was around five hours, but I was asleep for some of it. When we finally got to the lake, we still needed to take a boat across to the camp. Finally, we got there. The camp had everything close together, so it did not take to long to get to our campsite. On the way there, we passed the waterfront, a small roped of area of the lake, set apart from the rest of camp. On the other side of camp, near the dining hall, was the health lodge. When I first saw it, I thought, “Well, I hope I never need to go in there.” It had rained a lot that past winter, it even went through most of spring, which is unusual in California, and the rain had flooded many parts of the camp.
That night, I ran into my brother. Ben was my annoying older brother, but then again, I was his annoying younger brother. At home, after dinner I used to “infiltrate” his room, but whenever I did and refused to leave, thing tended to get physical. When I saw him and said hi, and he responded by saying, “Shut up.” But he said it with a slight smile on his face, so I know it as just part of our ongoing battle of words.
Tuesday night at dinnertime, I first noticed a headache that I had developed. Once I noticed it, it just kept bugging me past dinner. The dinner didn’t sit well that night, and I went to sleep early, hoping to feel better in the morning. Ben, of course, had absolutely no sympathy for me, he just told me to sleep it off.
By Wednesday at lunch, I felt like I had hit my worst. We were cooking in the campsite that day, but I just felt like sitting down and leaning on my arm. I dozed off, and by the time I woke up lunch was ready. The lunch was fine, and we had delicious cheesecake for dessert. I glared at my brother, who had taken more than I got. To make it worse, I felt so bad that I couldn’t bring myself to finish the cake. I threw it out when he wasn’t looking, so he wouldn’t get to tell me how wasteful it was to throw it out.
Later that day, I took the rifle shooting merit badge. All I had to do was get five shots in the space of a quarter five times. Sounds easy, I thought to myself. It was not easy. My first try, four were fine, but one shot was like 4 inches from the cluster. As I shot more, I got closer and closer, until finally I got one that I thought might be good. However, there was still one not covered by a quarter. Oh well, a simple adjustment should fix that. As soon as I did, however, another shot poked out. No matter how I moved it, one shot remained uncovered. No!!!, I thought, annoyed and getting mad. I don’t know if it was the anger or what, but right then my headache come flooding back. I lost all of my concentration. Now I couldn’t get a cluster if the target was just 5 feet in front of me, let alone 30. I was almost out of time, anyway. I went back to my campsite, shoulders slumped and a frown on my face.
On Thursday, my headache managed to get even worse, so I decided to go to the nurse’s office to see if she could help. To my surprise, my brother volunteered to come with me. The nurse my temperature with one of the thermometers that goes under your tongue. I was not an instant read, so it took a moment to read my temperature. When it was done, it read 102.8o F.  I was running a medium fever. We had to call my parents to see if we could use ibuprofen to help. They said we could, so we used it. At that point, my brother had left, but it had surprised me how mature he was acting.  After breakfast, I started to feel better. I still wasn’t allowed to go up the hill to the range, though, so I missed Rifle Shooting that day. That was terrible for me, as I felt better and could probably get the targets I needed.
Like all great things, though, my feeling better didn’t last. By four o’clock, I started to feel progressively worse until I felt even worse than that morning. It was for that reason that I was back in the health office after dinner. The nurse took my temperature again, but it took a really long time. When it was finally done, it suddenly ran out of battery before she could look at it. She had to get a new one and this one took even longer. Finally, when it was done it showed that my temperature was 104o F. A high fever, and a degree above what they would let me stay in camp at. I had to go to the urgent care, but first they needed to contact my parents. Little known to us, my parent were out on a walk, and they left their phones at home. We tried to reach them for half an hour. I took some ibuprofen, so my head was clearing up. Unfortunately, this made more room in my head for panic. “What’s going to happen?” “Why aren’t my parents responding?”
After what felt like hours, we finally got ahold of them. They said they could pick me up from urgent care in St. Lucas, but when we got there we had to wait some more. I feel asleep again, and when I up I still had to wait for an hour. I felt like everyone in the waiting room was different then when we got there. They said I was fine, and I ended up getting a hotel room and staying the night with my parents. I recovered fine at home, but I still don’t like camping quite as much to this day.


The author's comments:

This story is based off a real experience I had at summer camp.


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