Young Women's Camp; revisited.

Many moons ago, at twelve years old, I went to girls camp for my first time ever. It was the first time I'd been away from my parents for more than a weekend "on my own." It was the most exciting thing in the world. Who knew sleeping in A frames at a place called lockamora  would be so amazing

The Renton North/Bellevue South Stake (the name changed after I went to college) Young Women's camp is the best Girls' camp in the entire world. This is an undisputed fact. Just ask anyone who went to ours, then went to a different one.

Anyway, my first year we rigged the system and in our "unit requests" each of 4 girls my age wrote down each other so they put all of us in the SAME unit. It was AWESOME. It was me and Terri and Katie and Tiffany.

We were the freaky frogs, and it was awesome! Also, the unit leaders were awesome, the JC/YCL (junior counselor/youth camp leader) was amazing the 4th years that year were the Pigs and they were awesome (It was a Noah's Ark theme). It was just all so cool and new.

The best part of camp was the singing. We sang LOTS, some of the songs (like the Noah's Ark song) ad nauseam. But the very favorite song was the "I want to be insert-name-of-camp-director-here." The Junior staff (17 and 18 year olds) would line up on the stage and sing that they wanted to be the camp directior, but if they couldn't, a Milkmaid, plumber, waitress, preacher, birdwatcher, etc. they would be. It was hilarious! Each of the girls went above and beyond on what they would be. For example, the girl who was the bird watcher had a hand full of sunscreen and would put little bird droppings as she sang her part. (Aside: that song is where I got the name for my car: Betsy-- the milkmaid sang/yelled "GIVE BETSY GIVE, MY BABY'S GOT TO LIVE!") These were each sung once on their own, then also sung as a round. Especially our first year this was the coolest thing we'd ever seen. We were all in stitches (Well, that and "the turkey")

That year the camp director was Sister Buckmiller. So the song was "I want to be sister Buckmiller, there's no one I'd rather be...."

Fast forward 20-some years. My dear friend Tiffany has married Sister Buckmiller's son (AND is having a baby!!) So she can avoid being a milkmaid, a bird watcher, a plumber or a waitress; she gets to be Sister Buckmiller!

Since I am fairly certain that there are no more single sons, I'll have to make my own verse. "if I'm not Sister Buckmiller, a Speech therapist I will be; "ssss rrrr, try it again! SSSSS RRRR try it again!"