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Sunday, November 25, 2007

This one time...



Reader-submitted complaint: Hey! What's wrong with band camp?!


Nothing. Is someone overly sensitive today?

I've never been to band camp. It would wreck my ironic hipster image.

HAHAHAHAHA.

The truth is that I am far geekier than anyone who went to band camp. I have been to Bible camp more times than I can count for many different kinds of workshops, camps and conferences.

I went to Bible camp for about eight years. It's how I met a lot of the people I was friends with throughout my teen years. I even ended up going to university with one of them -- he is now a clergyman in a town near Bay Roberts.


Other than my parents, I think my overseas readers will be the only ones who will know who this is. Jonathan partnered up with my best friend for some time after Bible camp in 1994 (I can't bring myself to use the word "dated"), but that eventually didn't work out. In any case, the three of us went to Halifax to go to school together, and my friend discovered that yet ANOTHER boy from Bible camp was more to her liking.

If I'm giving the impression that Bible camp was all about hooking up, it sort of was. Parents: do not let your kids go to Bible camp. Nothing good can come of it.

My dad was almost always at Bible camp when I was there. I am what extremely annoying church people call a "PK", which is short for "preacher's kid". If you already knew what a PK is, please don't say so. It will completely destroy my mental image of my readers as ironic hipsters. I would really rather not know that you have covered your guitar case with Jesus Was Way Cool stickers, and I'm better off without knowing that you have a Real Men Love Jesus tattoo. Way to tacky up your own religion, guys.

If there were band camps when I was in high school, I wasn't aware of them. Perhaps a reader can enlighten the rest of us. Is it like Bible camp? Do you know it's geeky and yet wear it as a badge of honour?

6 comments:

The Blueberry Princess said...

I frequently get mocked for having attended marching band camp one summer while I was in college. People just assume that I attended band camp, which bothers me on a number of levels.

Since I didn't attend while in high school, I can't say for sure if it's like Bible camp. I think that most summer camps are probably pretty similar in the "hooking up" factor. When you group together male and female adolescents with similar interests, they often treat it like a dating service.

Anonymous said...

"Hooking up" at "Bible Camp"? Isn't that what the parents were hoping would happen?

Signed,
Your Parents and Bible Camp Counsellors.

Karen said...

Hmmm...I don't know which image is more troubling - a bunch of hormonal teenagers "hooking up" (always such a tasteful phrase) at Bible study camp, or parents who sent you off hoping you'd do exactly what you apparently did. I believe they have a word for that last part, and it isn't what I was taught in Sunday school.

Megan said...

I think the meaning of the phrase "hooking up" has changed over time.

Karen said...

A likely story.

b*babbler said...

Ah, bible camp.

Yes, I remember more than one illuminating event that occurred as a result of my attendance at bible camp.

Seriously, those band camp folk are mere neophytes.