What do you do when it's not the camper who is miserable, but the counselor? Back in April,we called it her "dream" job. On paper it sounded perfect.
Here I am at Camp Granada.
Camp is very entertaining,
And they say we'll have some fun if it stops raining.
As a tween she had gone to overnight camp and loved it. She particularly enjoyed her relationship with her counselors.
As a teenager, she is an enthusiastic babysitter( okay the lucrative $10 an hour is an incentive but she truly loves playing with kids.)
Unfortunately, when you add up "loved camp" +"love babysitting" you don't get " I'll love this job."
What we had not considered when we were talking about her spending the summer as a camp counselor was well, the "job". It is not an ideal job for a kid who relishes her "down time". Who knew camp counselors don't get any down time.
As she tearfully explained, " I'm always with the kids."
Except ,of course ,when she's in the bathroom on her cell phone talking to me. By this time the camp must think she has a serious lower tract condition.
I went hiking with Joe Spivy.
He developed poison ivy.
You remember Leonard Skinner...
He got ptomain poisoning last night after dinner.
All the counselors hate the waiters,
And the lake has alligators,
And the head coach wants no sissies,
So he reads to us from something called "Ulysses"
If she could, she would definitely quit. She wants to quit. She wants me to say it's okay to quit. I won't say that. And even if I did say it was okay, she wouldn't quit. She just wants to vent and to make absolutely, completely certain that I am totally aware that she is suffering an incredible hardship.
I got the message.
As miserable as she is (and in all of her 17 years, I can honestly say my daughter has never been this over the top, this distraught, this miserable in her entire life. ) We both know that quitting is not an option. Ranting is.
Being a camp counselor is a tough job to quit. It's a temporary job that doesn't pay well. It required a week of training and well, she gave her word that she would work there for the summer. So while she really hates this job, she knows she has to stick it out. And that makes her hate the job even more.
Now I don't want this should scare ya, But my bunk mate has malaria. You remember Jeffrey Hardy... They're about to organize a searching party.
Take me home, oh Muddah, Fadduh, Take me home, I hate Granada! Don't leave me in the forest where I might get eaten by a bear.
It is a day camp. Typically she goes to work in the morning and comes back at night. Except this week.On Friday she started her week as an overnight counselor. If she didn't like her job as a day counselor, being an overnight counselor is much worse.
It's 100 degrees in Minnesota .The cabins don't have airconditioning. Everyone spent the first two nights sleeping on the floor in the one big room with AC. Did I mention this is a kid who really appreciates air conditioning , doesn't like sleeping on the ground and oh, yeah, she really likes her down time?
Take me home, I promise I will not make noise,
Or mess the house with other boys.
Oh, please don't make me stay,
I've been here one whole day.Dearest Father, darling Mother,
How's my precious little brother?
Let me come home if you miss me,
I would even let Aunt Bertha hug and kiss me.
On Saturday she went to her boss and told him she didn't think she could make it. He told her she had to make it through the night. She did.
Yesterday she txted messaged me to say she had 96 hours left. Things are improving.
Wait a minute, it stopped hailing,
Guys are swimming, gals are sailing.
Playing baseball, gee that's betta,
Muddah, Fadduh, kindly disregard this letter!
While the words are in the form of a letter, narrating a summer camp experience that alternates between horrifying for the child, and horrifying to the parents, the tune is the sprightly "Dance of the Hours" by Ponchielli, as seen dramatized with dancing ostriches, hippos, elephants and crocodiles in Walt Disney's 1940 classic Fantasia. The contrast between Sherman's everyman voice, the banal choice of topic, the hilarious imagined situations, and the dignified classical music has kept the tune alive in memory even now, over 40 years later.
Unlike most song parodies, "Hello Muddah" seems to have crossed language and culture boundaries. Cornelis Vreeswijk's Swedish version, "Brevet från kolonien" ("The Letter from Camp"), has passed into folklore, and is still sung by and to children all over Sweden. In Norway, it's known as "Brev fra leier'n", as recorded by Birgit Strøm ("Titten Tei") in 1967. The song has also been translated into Esperanto and other languages, like Dutch (where it took the form of a letter from a soldier abroad and an equally silly answer from his parents). "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah" has also been used as the title for a 2003 travelling theatrical revue of Sherman's works.
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