KRISTA OVERBY BEST FRIEND

…and I think I won’t ever be the same.

Part of my job at camp is to go into our headquarters once a week and turn in paperwork, pick up checks, get approval on supply orders, etc.   I also use this time to go buy supplies at certain stores across the great states of Maryland and Delaware and do other random errands.  So I’m usually gone for most of the day.  However, today I didn’t have as much to do and I thought I would be back at camp by about 2 PM.  What a pipe dream!  I was able to get in and out of headquarters in about an hour and a half, but then I walked into Wal-mart.  I didn’t need to buy much today.  Most of the supplies we needed I was able to purchase on the internet or on the phone…but God help us we just needed some RIT dye and a couple of squeeze bottles….oh and I needed to print out our camper photos.  (Each group here has the option of purchasing a group photo.)  So I go up to the handy dandy little Kodak picture maker and start to work.  We wanted to add a border and some text so I knew it would take a little time…but holy be-jesus…it took me THREE HOURS to get those suckers finished.  THREE HOURS.  You know why?  Cause the damn Wal-mart photo lady today me to print WAY more than necessary.  The photo machine guy said they printed out 2 at a time, on one sheet, but OH NO, the photo lady (who by the way had one hell of a cold sore on her upper lip) said, no, they print out only one to a page……..was she right?  Should I have gone against the intelligence of someone who spends most of their waking hours in the Wal-mart photo center?  DAMN RIGHT I SHOULD HAVE!  She had me print out DOUBLE the amount of photos I actually needed.  Which meant I printed out FIFTY sheets of photos….you know how long that takes the machine to do?  YES, you got it!  2 hours!  Then they had to trim the photos…BY HAND.  Which took another 45 minutes.  You would think they would have a machine to trim them…I know those machines exist.

So while I was there I just watched all the people at Wal-mart in the middle of the day on a Wednesday.  Interesting stuff (if you are bored and have no one else to look at)…I saw a very young married couple (we are talking like seniors in high school) who came to pick up their pictures only to find that have of the pictures in their pile weren’t theirs…who were those strangers?  They didn’t know any of them, but the Wal-mart photo center staff in their invariable genius kept insisting they must be the couple’s photos..even after the real owners came up to the desk and…low and behold!  There were the strangers in the photos!  Look, only they are at Wal-mart and sweaty and not in their backyard pool.

There were lots of old guys in too big for their head John Deere trucker hats.  They sat on the bench with me for a little while and then got up and walked around a little longer…no carts, just them walking around the air conditioned bazaar.  I saw a lot of little babies…like, right out of the uterus little babies and lots of people in motorized scooters.  I did not see a little baby driving a motorized scooter…although that would have made up for the 4 hours I spend in the Wal-mart.

In other news, camp is going well.  The kids are here now and they are all basically good.  We might have a few future parolees and maybe a couple future baby mamas, but for the most part they are nice kids and they don’t annoy me much…now the staff…that is a whole other story.

Hi friends!

It’s me and I’m wearing a kerchief.  I’m dirty, have tuna breath, and have about 30 mosquito bites just on my right arm, but I’m hanging in there.  I feel like I’ve been at camp now for about 4 years, but at last count it’s only been 15 days.  I’m now a certified lifeguard and pro-rescuer…which basically means I can haul your soggy ass out of the pool if you start a’drownin…it also means I can splint your arm, wrap your wound, and I get to wear one of those cool lifeguard shirts all the cool girls at my local pool wore when I was but a wee lass. 

The staff all arrived a few days ago and needless to say I am decades older than all of them.  Almost every day I get some girl coming up to me and saying, “oh my god, I was talking to (Insert name here) and they told me how old you were…and I didn’t know you were so old!  I mean, I knew you were older, but I thought that was like 24.”  Yeah…these girls think 24 is old…to them 32 is unfathomable.  I think I’m going to try to institute some sort of elder-day…where everyone has to do something nice for me…cause I’m so much closer to dying than they are and everything. 

Most days I feel like I’m in high school again.  Except this time I’m the teacher and I have to look at the empty faces as I stand in front of them leading a session.  I had no idea what my teachers went though!  God bless ‘em!  It’s hard standing in front of 25 kids who are all looking at you like they wish you would die, or at least just pass out and leave them alone.  They aren’t all bad though, I have my favorites.  There are some kick ass people here, most of them are only 18, but I’ve always been a goofy bastard, so I think I can fit in somewhere.  I wish I could write more about certain things going on, but since this isn’t really an anonymous website or anything, I best not do that…just know there are some wacky characters around here.

The campers come next Sunday…only then will I really know what this whole camping thing is going to be like. 

I miss Brooklyn and my friends so much.  I miss the ole Betty Sandwich and I even miss the little bodega guy on the corner who would try and sell me old dirty candy bars every time I went in there.  I miss talking about a book and have people know what I’m talking about.  I miss going to the movies and I miss watching bad reality tv with Abby.  However, I am in a lovely part of the country right now.  I’m hoping I’ll be able to do a lot of swimming and boating this summer and hell, all of my meals are made for me…no doing the dishes!  So it’s a good life.  I couldn’t do this full-time, but for a summer, it’s not such a bad gig.