camp memory

Last spring at my church youth retreat my friend Alice and I were walking around the camp grounds after breakfast. Even though it was March it had been snowing for two days so we were both in winter boots and big fluffy sweaters (no one brought a winter coat because we did not think it would be so cold). That's when we heard music blaring from the large hall where we had group meetings. It was free time and neither of us had anywhere to be so we thought we should see what was going on. When we walked into the hall we saw one of the leaders had plugged his phone into the large speaker system and was blasting music while ten of our fellow campers had grabbed the pink and blue pool noodles from the game we played the day before and were having an all out war with each other. It took us about three seconds to rip off our boots and sprint to the back of the room to grab a pool noodle. Alice and I then teamed up to beat another one of our friends, Andrew who had gotten to the battle before we did (it was our revenge on him for not coming to get us). Pretty soon we had to take off our sweaters because we were moving around so much. It was amazing though, all around the room people were whipping pool noodles at each other and loving it. And because the music was so loud it did not take long for more and more people to come and join the fun. About forty five minutes in the leader of the whole camp came in and stopped us all, I thought she was going to get us all to clean up the hall and get ready for the next activity. To my surprise she yelled 'no hitting on the head' and then let us continue. So we all continued sprinting around the room, hitting our friends, and making star wars references. By the end of it the sixty of us were laughing so hard we were crying as we continued to beat each other with the noodles. I'm sure we all looked like complete idiots, but none of us cared. That is why I love those trips so much, at the beginning of the weekend you hardly know anyone but by the end of the weekend everyone is best friends. Everyone always gets along and it is just an amazing experience.