Camp Vignettes: Episode II

Skit Night always took place on the last evening. One year, someone in our ward hit on the most brilliant skit idea Camp Liahona at Buck’s Lake has ever experienced: Stand for Truth and Righteousness Woman and CTR Girl, played by Christa and her sister Brittany. The premise was simple…put young women in compromising situations then have tie-dye unitard clad Stand for Truth and Righteousness Woman and CTR Girl swoop in to save her from an uncomfortable chat with her bishop. The whole thing kind of spurred somewhat of a cult following in the stake. Girls dressing up as CTR Girl for Halloween dances and whatnot. Then the next year, when Stand for Truth and Righteousness Woman and CTR Girl reprised their appearance at skit night, we had to pause the performance for several minutes until the audience stopped screaming and jumping up and down. You’d have thought David Archuletta was in the house.

Someone orchestrated a YCL (Youth Camp Leader) musical number my final year. A group of maybe ten of us practiced for 20 minutes before standing in front of the entire camp to perform this song, and of course I got landed standing right next to the tone-deaf loudmouth shouting tuneless droning notes directly into my ear as though it were a microphone.

Camp songs! Lots of people hated this part of camp but I personally LOVED it. Especially when the 60-something leader of the Dayton ward would get up in front of everyone to sing her favorite – a rap-inspired version of children’s nursery rhymes called ‘Hump D. Dump’. She’d get so into it and always used a faux gravelly voice and the exact same motions – a border-line obscene pat-and-clap during the verses, followed by a hand on the hip coupled with a swimming fish motion during the chorus.

Camp names! When a girl achieved four years of camp experience, she was bestowed a ‘Camp Name’ by the YCLs. Usually the names were something lame and evocative like “Soothing Note” or “Beautiful Brook”. But MINE was “Hump D. Dump” because of the obnoxious, superbly exaggerated impersonation I’d do of the aforementioned woman. It was legendary – I was told that after my camp days were over, a younger girl from the ward got up in front of everyone and dedicated her performance of “Hump D. Dump” to me, wherever I was. So proud.

Oh gosh, I wasn’t even present for this one. But it hasn’t stopped me from telling the story before, and it certainly won’t now. We had the BEST cooks ever at camp making delicious meals, and every year they served the same classics. My friend Jenny’s favorite camp event each year was stroganoff night. She’d start talking about it weeks before. Well this one year on stroganoff night she was stuck learning how to tie knots, or identify clouds, or something, until after dinner had been served. In a panic, she sprinted to the kitchen as soon as she was able and, breathless, demanded if there was any left. She was in luck, sort of. There were enough noodles stuck to the edges of the empty pans to scrape together a meager plate. So there Jenny is, her beloved stroganoff sitting on her upturned hands, blithely making her way back to our campsite, when she TRIPPED ON A ROOT and her meal fell facedown in the dirt.

There was an obstacle course one year with the most ill-conceived contest in the history of church camps. It involved flesh-colored panty hose tied around the waist with a large potato down each leg, and lots of pelvic thrusting. The point was to move an object around the course by standing over it and swinging the oh gosh does it really matter? The point is, it was hilarious, and someone obviously didn’t think it through before setting us loose on it. I’ve never laughed to the point of throwing up, but I’m sure that’s the closest I’ve ever come.

My final year of camp, I chose not to shower. It started as an accident, then became a camp-wide joke to see how long I could hold out for. And I somehow didn't smell nasty (or so everyone assured me). My hair even looked the same as it always did at camp. I think the dirt must have absorbed the greeze. Finally I had to cave in on day six, but only because I was the member of a skit that required extreme hair teasing and the only way to deal with the aftermath was abundant conditioner.

There was an overly devout, holier-than-thou girl at camp that was just BEGGING to be pranked. She was the “I’m better than you because I don’t eat chocolate because we’re not supposed to drink coffee and coffee has caffeine and so does chocolate” type. Obnoxious. So the week before (yes it was totally premeditated, don’t hate me mom) I went out and bought a thong – not even a sexy thong, just a regular white cotton one – and wrote this girl’s name on the tag. Then I planted it on the picnic table right next to the meal lineup. Every single girl in the entire camp saw it there while waiting for breakfast the next morning, arranged perfectly with the tag prominently displayed. It worked so much better than I ever thought it could have. She ended up that night in front of the entire camp – and there were a LOT of us girls – swearing the thong was NOT hers, she would NEVER wear something so disgusting and immoral, and whoever did it ought to be ASHAMED. It was my crowning Girl’s Camp achievement.

The end.