Church Camps or Death Camps?
Disclaimer: This essay or rant or whatever you want to call it is in no way to be taken seriously. I do hope you do get something out of this though, whether it is a new person for your hit list or a new reason to commit suicide.
Yes, you read
correctly. I do not like church
camps. Now, this doesn’t make me an
evil person nor am I going to hell for this.
I am going to try to explain my utter hatred for these camps of pain and
agony in the best possible way. On we
go.
The first thing you
must realize is the main reason for your parents’ love of these weeks of
suffering. Sure, they would like you to
believe that you are doing it for your own good and to save your soul. But I know now the REAL reason. They just want you out of the bloody house
for a week. Think about it. This is during the summer. You are around all the time and your parents
are quite frankly getting sick of you.
So they find these nice excuses to ship you away for a little
while. This also goes for Boy Scout
trips, VBS, and the Junior Mafia League.
So you drive
anywhere from one to seventeen and a half hours with either your family or a
bunch of other screaming brats like yourself in a church van. If you are lucky enough to go in a church
van be prepared for constant yelling at, threatening of running the van into
the nearest tree and general mayhem.
Oh…and in case you are wondering…YES I had bad experiences with Church
Camps, so this might seem a little one-sided.
Al right, now you
are finally at the camp. You get your
stuff and go into the cement bunkers they try to call dorms. You enter into the dark, dank and vaguely
urine smelling room. You pick out your
bunk and get your stuff all set up.
BUT, be sure to lock your stuff.
Remember, some of these kids are sent here because their parents don’t
want to actually work and decide to send their horrid little monster somewhere
else and let THEM discipline them. So
lock your stuff tight, otherwise you might lose that brand new Discman your
stepmother got for you.
The first days are
fairly decent. They don’t try to
structure your every minute of the day and you get to run free and meet
everyone else that you haven’t seen, talked to, or really cared about in a
year. The fakeness is amazing. You talk to and act like you care about
someone you haven’t even thought about in a matter of months. It’s outstanding! After about an hour of that, they herd all of your little
miscreants into the chapel area. And
this is where it begins.
The very first night
they start with the guilt trips. Every
single message at Church Camps are about sex, getting right with God, not doing
bad things, how bestiality is wrong.
You know…the usual. They
continue to heap the guilt on the ENTIRE time you are there. And on this first night is the VERY first,
though not last, altar call.
------------------------------------
<Begin Altar Call
Mini-Rant>
Ok… this probably
sounds REALLY bad. I don’t hate altar
calls in general; I just hate how they are sometimes done. I am talking about the ten hour long ones.
You all know what I am talking about.
When the preacher is like, “As we sing the 345th verse of
Bringing in the Sheep, isn’t there ONE more person who would come?” And the only guy left is in the very back of
the room with a pentagram tattooed on his forehead, a Slayer T-shirt, and “I
hate Christians” scarred into his arm.
HE IS NOT GOING TO COME UP!!! I
don’t CARE how long you are asking people to come. Some are going to come right when you start and some are NEVER
going to come up. It’s a very simple
idea really. There is no use dragging
it out as long as they do. They just do
this so they can feel good that a LOT of people came up to the front. –whew-
I am done.
</End Altar Call
Mini-Rant>
------------------------------------
All right…enough of
that, back to these evil camps. After
this night…the Nazi-like structure of your days begin. Every friggin’ minute of your day and life
is put into neat little schedules. You
have to get up at a certain time, eat at a certain time, take a crap when you
have to, and you HAVE to do these things.
Oh, and don’t forget the sports that you are required to play and that
everyone takes WAY to seriously. Some
days I don’t want to play Frisbee Golf or Volleyball, but you really have no
choice. And heaven help you if you suck
at it, because you will never hear the end of it from your “friends.” I have never seen a group of supposedly good
kids going loco over who missed the last shot of the game. It is ridiculous.
Who can forget all
the little flings that went on. Try and
tell me that the church camps you went to didn’t resemble a middle school
version of As the World Turns. The
amount of break ups, cheating, and random sexual encounters rivaled any kind of
movie you would see on Cinemax at 1 in the morning. And yes, I was guilty of this as much as everyone else. Maybe that is why they shove guilt messages
down your throat every time they can. I
learned more about the opposite sex and just sex in general at Church Camp than
anywhere else.
So there you have it
in a nutshell, the REAL story behind Church Camps, these evil places where
angels fear to tread. And that, as they
say, is that.
This has been
another rant brought to you by the Ego-apathetic Shin Karasu!