ACA Home Forums You Know You are A Counselor When...

When the air around you smells better than you do. [at camp]

When lake water is a completely acceptable, mostly preferred, method of cleansing.

When taking a lifejacket off makes you feel lonely, for they give wonderful hugs!

When you know that you are just going to get wet if let the girls play drip drip drop!

When you room is full of camp memoriablia!

When in an awkward situation you proudly display the awkward turtle! [or whatever awkward 'thing' you do...]

When you are the go-to person for get to know you/ice breaker games!

When you have some great campers who dont want to go home

CIL I am intrigued by the awkward turtle - what is that!

When you are seriously getting special T-shirts made for the day you go for your Visa, and when you are seriously thinking about making a Tshirt that says Camp Geek and buttons that say "Its a camp thing!"

when you have already started planning what you will be taking to camp!

when you own a trunk of random stuff in New Hampshire!

you don't know awkward turtle!?!?!! aaaah!

when there is an awkward silence or just something awkward is said, you place one hand on top the other, palms down, and spin your thumbs in a forward motion. i am sooo surprised you don't know about awkward turtle!!

when you have mastered the skill of comforting multiple crying campers without so much as a sweat!

When you have mastered the art of comforting a homesick camper without any of the other ones getting homesick so that you have to comfort more than one at a time!

^^^ Very true...

I might have already said this, but when you are in "real life" and turn around to end children fighting in public. And then, you realize that is not your job any longer

yeah, that one has been mentioned quite a few times! but it is soo true!

These are so hilarious!!! I will be printing them off and bringing them to pre-camp for a laugh!

I might just have to that too!

you know you are a counsellor when you spend time discussing what to do with unshowered hair!

when own a million bandanas (even though you cant wear them!)

when you know your camp address nearly as well if not as well as your home address

When you are feeling down so turn to your star jars or camp autograph books to be cheered up!

I have already started copying and pasting the ones that apply to me or are just plain funny! It is also a way of weeding out the repeats! I am considering putting the best ones in a frame for my friend for her 10 year!

That would be really cool - oh i might pinch that idea and do it for my friend for her birthday!

that's a good idea too! When we were campers I made my friend a list of the counselors names that we knew because that was always a big thing at camp, trying to figure out their names. Sometimes we managed before the end of the week, but some of them never told us!

oh that's a really cool idea!

write them out in really nice script or find a cool font...ideas are coming out my ears!

I refuse to tell the campers my real name! between 2003-2004 the camp that I was at - we had late night shack parties on the last night and the girls go to ask us any 5 questions they wanted and we had to answer (but not necessarily truthfully) so of course we were asked our "real" names - with the exception of one session I told them it was demelsa! that one session i had to say it was ermintrude cos I had managed to convince a camper that reason for camp names was that we were all called Ermintrude (except coda the male drama specialist who we said was called engleburt but had a camp name so he wouldn't feel left out!). We even got our program manager to agree with us and she told the girl that they would hire anyone who wasn't called ermintrude! Still makes me laugh 4 years later!

I pretty much never tell them my name! I think in 20-30 weeks at camp I have told like 3 campers. That is not to say my school name (thats what my CIT director calls our "real names") hasn't gotten out. One of my friends when I was a DCA had a brother who was 8 or 9. He liked to tell all the day campers her real name. Well, when we became friends, her brother new my name too and delighted in saying both of our names! Another time i was in a rowboat with half of my campers and I looked up and saw someone I knew sitting in a rowboat. I called her name and she looked up, saw me and was kind of shocked to see me and yeeled out my name. grrr It wasn't her fault though, so its all good!

I don;t like telling campers because then when some of them come back it goes around and then the campers just try to trick me into listening to my name, which I am pretty good at ignoring when I want to!

at our camp, truth is a really big thing.
on day 10, everyone tells their name really quickly in our name song. [we do it day 1 with camp names]
during the session, we keep our names a secret, but we can't lie and give 'fake' names. if we did, it could bring up a trust issue...[you lied about your name, what else did you lie about? etc.]

yeah, we just have fun with our names and if they get out, they get out. I don't believe that anyone has ever really lied about their names. It was really funny though one time. My counselor actually convinced couple of kids that her real name was Bert, which was her camp name! It was pretty skillful I must say.

once the song is over, we don't talk about the names, no matter how hard they persist!
its so funny to see them with pen/paper trying to write down as many 'real names' as possible during our 60-second run!

that's amazing!!! I love that they try to write them down!!

we kind of strayed from the topic! haha oh well! It was a fun trip!
I thought I had a good one, but lost it, dang it!

ha.

you know you are a camp counselor when you spend all of the off-season inventing new uses for bandannas.

or for trying to find out how to sing all the songs in your staff book! or for buying songs online just because they are camps songs and you want to learn how to sing them!

Also, you know you are obsessed when you are actually considering paying your mom to ship your Counselor-Brain-in-a-Box to you despite the fact that you have little money to your name and you are going home in less than 2 months and you can write your ideas down in a notebook just as easily and transfer it later!

ahh i am excited for your reunion with your brain in a box! whenever it happens, its going to be a great thing!!

aww thanks!! I will let everyone know when I get it! I am excited for it too!!

When you are truly excited for someone to be reunited with their box of ideas and understand why they want it when it is still February! Thanks CIL!