Monday, February 4, 2013

The Camper

by Maxine Wiesenfeld


Prologue:
Throughout my many summers spent at Camp Ramah, I have had many amazing, crazy, and funny experiences.  My name is Janna.  I am sixteen years old, and have been going to Camp Ramah since I was very young.  When I was around twelve years old, my family moved from New Jersey, to Hockessin, Delaware.  I loved my new home, but I really missed my friends.  For two summers I was not able to go to back to camp because of the circumstances.  When I was fourteen I reconnected with many of my childhood friends from camp.  With much thought, I decided I did not want to spend another summer without them.  I ultimately convinced my parents that I simply must go back to summer camp, and they finally agreed!  At last, the summer arrived.  It was the summer going into my first year of high school.  I remember arriving the first day of camp, and seeing so many welcoming, and familiar faces.  I immediately saw my friend Max, who I hadn’t seen in almost three years.  She was so excited to see me and we embraced.  I was pretty upset that we weren’t in the same bunk together, but we ended up hanging out with one another the whole summer.  The next summer, to both our excitement, Max and I were assigned to the same bunk.  We had such a fantastic summer full of amazing memories, and friends.


Tale:
Here begins the camper’s tale.  It was visiting day, summer 2012.  It was an amazing day, being reunited with my family for a few hours.  My mother surprised me as well as the rest of my bunk with a special gift: an inflatable swimming pool.  My best friend Max was one of the most excited out of everyone.  Max and I were determined that right after all of the parents left we would get this thing up and running no matter what.  Our first order of business was to fill it with air.  We set it behind our bunk and Max and I found two mouthpieces and began blowing.  We blew air into the rubber mouthpieces like there was no tomorrow.  Straining our lungs was the least of our problem.  Our goal was to make this happen.  Suddenly we heard the sound of a golf cart driving.  It was our division head, Arielle.  She took one look at us and said, “this is hilarious, you girls are too funny!”  She told us it was a great idea, but we’re going to pass out if we continue blowing it up by mouth.  She told us to go on a hunt around camp to find a basketball pump or something.  So our journey began.  Max and I began a crazy run around camp in search of a ball pump.  Our first stop was the tennis sports shack.  We figured since it was next to a basketball court, we’d get lucky.  We were unfortunately wrong.  No ball pump there.  We continued our search as we ran around camp.  We soon came to the nature shack, we had a strong feeling they would have one.  Outside, we saw one of the staff members, some random kid who went to school with Max and graduated this past year.  Max ran up to him, begged him for an air pump, but he told her he didn’t have one either!  At long last, we found a person on sports staff, who found us a tiny hand-pump.  We knew it would take long, but it would be so worth it!  We raced back to our bunk where we continued to blow up the pool, me pumping with our newly found air pump, and Max blowing on the mouthpiece.  For the next three hours or so, numerous girls from our bunk took turns blowing up the pool with our air pump.  Slowly, but surely, the pool was completely inflated!  We were extremely excited!  Our next task as you might imagine, was filling it with water.  My whole bunk helped out.  We took water bottles, and buckets of all shapes and sizes and ran in and out of the bathroom using the sink to fill our containers.  We would take the water, run outside and pour it into the pool and then ran back inside to refill.  This process took about another hour.  Once it was done everyone changed into their swimsuits and were ready to party.  Everyone who passed by thought we were completely insane, but we didn’t care!  We proved to them that with teamwork and patience we could get anything done, no matter how insane it is.  This definitely was an extremely memorable moment of my experiences at summer camp that I will never forget.
HERE ENDS THE CAMPER’S TALE

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