1. You are well aware that kids are allergic to everything. Peanuts were a death sentence to literally all children, and then there was always that one child who was allergic to “heat” and/or “water.” But how?
2. You know it wasn’t nice to pick favorites, but you did anyway. You just couldn’t help yourself. The kids did it to themselves. Don’t act annoying if you don’t want to be labeled as annoying. It’s simple.
3. You cannot remember the names of the average campers. You remember the cool campers. You remember the weird campers. You even remember the annoying campers. But as for the rest, nope. No idea. Unless they had really awesome or really awful parents. Then you’ll never forget them.
4. You definitely have a weird collection of costumes probably hiding at your parent’s house or something. There could always be a need for costumes and/or weird ass accessories. You can’t just, like, get rid of them.
5. You might hate rain during summer now, but back then you loved it. RAINY DAY = MOVIE = NO NEED TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE CHILDREN = YAAASSSSSSSSSSS
6. You know that 99.9% of parents out there are NUTS. Not everyone is a winner, not everyone is perfect, and not everyone can be friends.
7. You make a mean tie-dyed shirt. You know exactly where to fold and place a rubber band around a t-shirt (and underwear, and socks, and soffee shorts) to create THE MOST PERFECT SWIRL.
8. The decorations on the awards you handed out were always on fleek. You spent a lot of time on those. They were FRIDGE WORTHY. Imagine if you had Pinterest back then? Damnnnnn, things would have been a lot different.
9. You wore a lot of friendship bracelets during the summer, made by children (and also yourself, who are you kidding?). You basically had a sleeve of Chinese Staircases and Candy Stripes, nbd.
10. You probably still have your staff shirt. Forever and always ready for picture day. #StrikeAPose
11. You can’t do public pools. You have witnessed poop in the pool. Yes. POOP in the POOL. What is wrong with youths? Aren’t all children supposed to get potty trained at home? You still don’t get it.
12. You cringe at the fact you used to make campers give you “the chills.” That was, like, weird. “Line up to tickle my back, children!” The fuck?!
13. The chant “Boom Chicka Boom” gives you PTSD. Especially when it is in “Janitor Style” or “Underwater Style.” All other camp songs, however, are fine. In fact, sometimes you dream of going back to the dining hall to belt them out.
14. You know that in order to get people to like you, you just need to give them food. Humans <3 food. Now humans <3 you.
15. Your campers always knew when you had a crush on someone and would not hesitate to let that special someone know by screaming and pointing at you in front of said crush of course. Kids are literally the most embarrassing people on the planet.
16. For a while, “Camp Counselor” was the most badass thing on your resume. #Leadership #Skills
17. You are pretty sure that because you somehow managed to deal with dozens of whiny children on a daily basis, you’ll be a great parent. And because of that, you probably will be. You just looooove kids, in the most non-Michael-Jackson way possible, duh.
18. You can’t believe that some of your campers are now of legal drinking age. And cover your newsfeed with pictures of college parties… and partake in serious things like relationships. ARE YOU REALLY THAT OLD? Because the answer is yes.
19. You will never get over the fact that you once got PAID to TAN. Minus the freaky tan lines, you had a pretty sweet gig. Now you’re stuck in an office all day. Whyyyyyyyy.
20. You apologize for ever complaining about how HARD it was to be a counselor and secretly – okay, openly – wish you could go back to that life. Management wanted you to socialize with your co-counselors 80% of the time instead of 98% of the time, and you were not okay with that. Now, you socialize with co-workers maybe 10% of the time. You’ll take that 80% of social time back now! You’ll even take a social-cut at 75%. You just want to tan… and hang out with 13 year olds so you have someone to talk about PLL too (or maybe that’s just me). MUST LIFE REALLY BE THIS HARD?
Guess you’ll just have to live vicariously through your kids when you start sending them to camp one day. You have already promised yourself, though, you won’t be one of THOSE parents. Or will you?
LONG LIVE THE CAMP COUNSELOR LIFE.
