There were a bunch of blubbering parents all around the buses and quite a few kids blubbering too. I even heard a few begging not to go but, I had looked forward to this for months and I was so ready to go. I stopped at the door to the bus while a funny guy with sort of long hair checked my name off his list and told me to give all of my stuff to a guy that was throwing everyone’s stuff up to another guy on top of the bus. I did as I was instructed and then I got on the bus.
I ended up setting next to this girl that was weird. She talked faster than anyone I had ever met, but she was kind of cute as much as girls could be when you are a kid. After about 45-minutes, the funny guy climbed on the bus and announced that everyone was accounted for and that we would be leaving in ten-minutes. He also introduced himself has Marty and about half the bus shouted out all at once, “HI MICKY!” He shot everyone a mean but silly look and shouted back, “That’s Marty… bear bate!” and everyone laughed. I figured they all must be returning campers since this was my first year at camp and I had no idea why they had done that.
Just before we left, Marty ran through the camp list again and everyone said, “Here!” or some silly variation of it and then we were officially off. The trip was nearly two hours long but it went fast and we sang songs for part of the way and everyone talked with someone the rest of the time. After about a half hour of listening to Crystal, that was the girl’s name that I had sat down next too, I decided I needed to move or she was going to drive me nuts. As soon as she started talking to a girl in front of her, I made my escape and moved up a few seats to where three boys were looking at what I thought at first were baseball cards but turned out to be a deck of cards with nearly nude girls on them. They welcomed me right in and the four of us joked and laughed and hit it off right away.
As luck would have it, all four of us got split into different cabins, which bummed us all out, but not for too long. When I got to my cabin, most everyone was already there and had taken a bunk. I ended up taking a bottom bunk next to the bathroom. I would later understand why no one took this earlier as I heard, every little, and not so little sound that happened in the bathroom, not to mention the smells.
There were 14 kids to every cabin and two adults. One was the camp counselor, and the other was a counselor in training called a C.I.T. Our councilor was Jake and we eventually nicknamed him Jake the Snake and sometimes just Snake for short. I honestly don’t remember the real name of our C.I.T. It didn’t matter since everyone just called him Frog. It even caught on with the Camp director and other councilors.
Frog was great at telling stories and he told us a different one every night for the entire three weeks. Frog was able to do a different voice for every person in each of his stories and no two characters ever sounded the same.
Jake the Snake was like the big brother that everyone wished they had. He talked to us about anything and everything we wanted to know. He even told us all about sex one evening when we all forced him to by asking him over and over again the entire day. I’m 15-years-old now and I still miss Jake and Frog. I think about them from time to time and wish I knew where they were today.
Well, anyway, my next close encounter happened on that very first night of camp. I was so wired from all the excitement that I couldn’t sleep, but then, hardly anyone else could either. Jake and Frog let us talk as long as we only whispered and stayed lying down on our own beds. We talked well into the night and only stopped when sleep grew stronger than our excitement.
