And then there was this one time at camp.....

Notice I didn't say band camp, so No, it's not like that, but I did think it was time to talk about our camp experience! Where to begin...well with the beginning i guess. I had just begun attending, maybe had 4 or 5 months under my pre-teen belt when it was announced that we were going to be traveling down to the Okefenokee Swamp for camp. 4 nights and 5 days away from my parents and brother, i was scared and excited. Of course, like with everything else there were rules. Shorts and skirts had to be knee or finger length, no spaghetti strap shirts, no cleavage, no personal contact was to be had at all with the opposite sex (keep at least a pencils length between you at all times), no boys were allowed in the pool area while the girls were swimming (in tshirts no less) and vice versa. All seemed somewhat reasonable, but of course when you tell kids what not to do they have the inane desire to do just that! Schedules were strict. Bible study twice a day, sermons at night and mandatory games (unless you were dying and even then that wasn't acceptable). Of course we were the more "liberal" of the churches that attended with us so we weren't allowed to talk about us wearing pants and listening to music with "drums" aka contemporary Christian music! The last rule...whatever happens at camp should stay at camp, our discussions and bible studies are between us and y'all. As the years rolled on, we drew away from the other churches, picking and choosing who was allowed to join us in our attempt to get away from the secular world. Things kept changing, the basketball shorts gave way to cool-lots (yuck), the pc rules became even stricter and the fun seemed to be sucked right out of everything. By the time my children were attending camp, the camp experience as I knew it was long gone, replaced with a terrible excuse for drilling the teens with more rederick about how evil parents/adults are and you should only befriend those who are in attendance of the church.
The things that were being taught to the teens started turning a corner for loopy as well. I remember the night that my daughter came home and wanted to tell me what they were being told at her Wednesday night study. Imagination was a sin, because imagining leads to magic which leads to the devil and hell. Yes people this is real! They were also told, that no girl and boy should ever be alone, no matter what age or the circumstance until they are married. Now i have my ideals of how dating should go, but this seemed a bit extreme to me. This and many other things are what led me to begin questioning the way of life we were living, not question God, but man and his ideas of what he thought God meant.