Tony Cai
Camp Ramapo
It is the year 2008. In case you forgot, it was an era of baggy jeans, air force 1’s, and decisions to be made between getting a sidekick or blackberry. My friends and I, along with the rest of the 6th grade class are headed to Ramapo. I handed in the list of the ten people (who were my friends) that would share a room together, weeks in advance and since then it was a whole lot of waiting now waiting is over. We were all excited and agreed to meet each other at the front of the school in the morning. I remember getting up at 6 and feeling groggy that morning but unlike the other days where I would calculate exactly how much longer I could stay in bed (down to the last second), I rubbed my eyes, sprung out of bed. The rest is a blur because I was trying to get to my school on time to board the bus. My dad who walked me to school bought me some gummy bears but unlike the gummy bears, I survived the bus ride and now I’m able to tell you my stories at camp Ramapo.
It is springtime and if you’re allergic to pollen, you’re probably aware of the three types of itches that affect the eyes. The first is the itch that is tolerable but you wouldn’t dare relief it because of the fear of making it worse. The second one is the one that you know will only itch more if you keep rubbing but can’t stop because it’s so annoying, as if someone imbedded a small rock into your eye. The third is the type that results from the discovery of a heads-up penny or anything that gives good luck because the third type is the kind that when you rub your eyes, the itch goes away.
Unfortunately, me being inside a cabin surrounded on all sides by trees and vegetation resulted in me getting the worse of the second type of itch. By nighttime I was a wreck: my eyes wouldn’t stop itching, my throat was itchy and every time I coughed it resulted in a pain that rippled through my body starting at the throat. There was nothing I could do but lie in bed and watch my friends monkeying around.
I like skittles but like many other sweets, there’s only so many you can eat at one time before you feel like throwing up the next time you see another. That was the case with the party-sized bag of skittles that Yuxiang brought with him. We (my friends and I) had barely gotten through a quarter of the bag when we really did feel like throwing up and that’s when he had the idea of throwing the skittles at the revolving ceiling fan. Pretty soon everybody was throwing skittles at the fan and watching which part of the room they would end up in. It’s too bad none of the skittles hit anybody when it reflected off the fan because we would have laughed so hard at him. They later upgraded from throwing skittles at the fan to throwing pillows. There was also a failed attempt at throwing Yuxiang’s sidekick.
During the whole skittles, pillows, and failed attempt at throwing a sidekick at the fan festival, I was in bed feeling like crap, that’s what spring allergies do to you. However, if it was not for me feeling miserable, I would not have seen the lone yellow skittle on the floor next to the bunk bed. What’s so important about this skittle? You may ask but that’s because I haven’t told you that my buddy Reishaun was standing with his back to me, just a few feet in front of the bed. I picked up the skittle, aimed and released it. The skittle hit him square in the middle of the back of his head. Immediately Reishaun spun around and said: “What the fuck?” but I had already dived back under my covers and my in my current condition, there was no one else to blame except for my friend Oscar who was on the top half of our bunk bed. It took a lot of effort to laugh quietly as Reishaun took one of my shoes that were on the floor and hit Oscar with it Oscar was so confused as to why he was getting beaten with a shoe and that was when it was especially hard to keep the laughter down.
I’ve never been hiking before but I assumed it must feel great because I’ve seen people hiking on television and they look so amazed at their surroundings, breathing in deeply to sample the scent of nature in the meantime getting great exercise. I couldn’t have been more wrong. By the time we got to the top of the hill we were hiking I was so tired. Though I may have been amazed at my surroundings at the beginning of the hike, that amazement quickly began to lessen as I got further and further up. Between the flies in my face and the quickly accumulating sweat, I was miserable all over again. As we began to walk down the hill towards flat grassy plain, I lost my steady downward pace. You may know that when you’re walking down a steep slope its best to keep your steps measured and firm as to avoid stumbling, falling your whole way down. Well as you may have guessed, I took too long of a step and the momentum sent me stumbling down the slope. I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to look like an idiot stumbling my whole way down the hill so what did I do? I ran down to make it seem like I was doing it on purpose and I guessed I looked pretty normal until I finally stopped when a bush broke my fall.
When we reached the plain, one of the instructors at the camp provided us with a challenge: Whoever could find the most colors on the plain could decide for the group whether we should head back or not because by that time everyone was tired and annoyed so they were eager to set out on the quest. As you probably already know, a grassy plain contains mostly the color green and whatever color of the flowers it has so it wouldn’t be surprising if I told you everyone found the same colors. That is except for George. He was the only one that found something white and kind of grayish. It was dried up and everybody laughed at him including me. Can you guess what the dried up white and grayish thing was? It was in fact bird poop and since George won the challenge, the instructor asked what he wished to do. Of course someone so eager to pick up bird poop would be eager to continue on so we knew his answer before he said it. Sure enough he said yes and everyone began to complain and yell at him. I guess that’s what we get for laughing at him.