Secondary School Camp - A real story

There is a very old saying, “All work and no play makes Bill a dull boy”. Keeping in this in mind, my secondary school had grandly presented the secondary 2 level camp.

                A two day camp, I think this was the first time that I went to a camp whose coaches hated us to the core. From the moment I entered the camp to the moment I left the camp, I felt only deep hatred generating from the coaches. And that amount seemed to be unnaturally big when it reached the head coach. Such people, I was surrounded with for two whole days.

                I am naturally a highly optimistic person; rare matters upset me. So think extreme when I was frowning the whole duration of the camp.

                But don’t wrongly judge me, I don’t hate camps. Primary 5 was the best year of my life. The days before the real camps included me excited and looking forward to the camp. I was even a little scared; I am a huge fan of acrophobia and normal camps would contain high elements such as abseiling so, imagine me at home, pacing around.

Sadly the camp was a big letdown. No abseiling. No fun activities. Angry coach. Can things get any worse? Yes. The least you could ask for is to sleep in a tent. But the rain spoiled that for me. So my mind was silently shouting “Oh my god! That’s it!!”. My great expectations were torn to pieces, but that’s not all. The next fateful morning was filled with a ‘fun’ and ‘useful’ run all over the camp grounds. Some squats, jumping jacks and pure hatred. I was practically counting down the hours to freedom. And according to my watch, that was a long way to come. Talk about torture! I would have been happy to trade places with and ‘pow’ prisoners in Hitler’s mansion.

Finally the evening walked in and the sun dipped down into the horizon. And the worst of my long awaited nightmare emerged. The bonfire. Why it’s terrible? I’m not at all hinting at the songs and the dance. It wasn’t terrible. The blame is on the small ‘act’ we have to perform for the parents to show how disciplined I am. The time we went through earlier to practice it in the nick of time. The thought of how cruelly the coaches used us to promote their good work disgusts me till now. Nothing in my life could prepare me for this much selfishness shown to us. But of course, the power chain shows that I’m lower in command than the coaches so I have to accept what happens to me. It won’t be hard to predict the level of joy when we saw our buses arrive on the road to whisk us away.

Finally to end it, the 2016 level camp wasn’t at all what I expected. But at least I spent time with my friends and that is enough to last me for years.