12/01/2003 - 12:24 p.m.

The Nightmare Begins

Last night I had the single worst dream I think I've ever had.

Pixie, Polar, Bunny, Karalee, Rusty, and I were the only ones back on staff at camp. So, that makes four unit staff, a nurse, and a lifeguard. In spite of this obvious shortage, Patches made the decision to increase the number of girls about 6 times: rather than 150 girls, there were 1000. To say they were running wild was an understatement. Because of this, there was a staff meeting every morning in which Patches yelled at the four unit staff for about half an hour.

During that day's staff meeting a girl fell out of one of the pine trees. According to the girls with her, she had climbed all the way to the very top and stood there before she fell. When she fell, she split in half at the waist. Rusty had picked up both halves and was carrying the girl around in one of the golf carts. Patches saw this and started following the golf cart around in a little blue Geo Metro convertable (don't ask), all the while talking on a mobile to Sharon, blaming the accident entirely on the unit staff and saying she would take no responsibility for it.

As the two vehicles drove out of site towards Swanson Lodge, Pixie and Bunny showed up with the other golf cart. Pixie had discovered that it had a button that would raise the entire golf cart off its wheels into the air, like a cartoon car. She wanted to see how high it would go, but Bunny wouldn't try it with her, so I had to. I got in, Pixie pushed the button, and up we went. When we were level with the trees, she stopped, because we didn't want to be seen. The question now was: how do we get back down? There was no button for this. We decided it was a weight thing, and so started trying to put as much weight on the thing as we could. In the end, Pixie found the right button and the golf cart went back down.

At this time, we realised it was time for lunch, something none of us wanted to go to. I quickly found out why. All 1000 girls ate at exactly the same time, and most of them at tables holding thirty. All the unit staff except Karalee had to sit at the tables of thirty. Karalee sat at a table of eight and the other two hundred or so kids fended for themselves.

I was having quite a time with the thirty girls I was supposed to watch out for. It was the first day of camp, and they had no idea how meals worked. I was trying to explain it over the noise of the rest of the room. Being lunch, it was salad bar time, and as soon as the table next to them got up, all thirty of my girls got up and ran to the salad bar. There was one girl in particular who was about twelve (and so should've known better) that stuck her fingers in the ice and threw it all over the place. So of course, all the rest of the table did the same. Karalee came over extremely pissed at me because they were doing grace and why was I having so much trouble; her girls were behaving perfectly. She also pointed out that my staff shirt (which we were required to wear every day) was dirty.

I got mad. I'd been getting yelled at every day for things over which I had no control, everything was completely out of hand, and I was walking home right then. I walked out of Swanson and ran into Polar in the front hall. Except, he didn't look like Polar, he looked sort of like Dober from that show Coach. Anyway, he was drying his hair on a towel and visibly pissed. I asked him what was wrong and he said that Patches had fired him and then pushed him in the swimming pool. He was leaving.

We were just about to strike out to complain to somebody when I woke up. Four hours later, this seems funny, but when I woke up, I was extremely upset about the whole thing. It seems little more than a teeny exaggeration about last summer and what could happen this summer.