I love camp???

So, in the past at camp, old staff members have come back and helped out. And from what I remember, they might have been a little out of place... but we always attempted to include them in anything we did.... or at least I did. And so when I've known a lot of these counselors for at least three or four years, and I come back to HELP, I had expected that I would have been treated like maybe they had appreciated me taking my time to drive the 1.5 hours up to camp to work... for free.

This week is the last week of the summer, and I thought I'd take some time off of work (that I get PAID for) to come VOLUNTEER at camp. I want to know why it is that when I try to include everybody, I'm the one that's being excluded from a lot of things.

The second night I was here (aka last night), I was in the upper level of the staff house, eating some leftover strudel sticks. Stuff in this fridge (my family happened to donate the fridge, as it were) is meant to be eaten by the staff; it's the snack food fridge. Ms. Katie Vickers, a counselor who's my age, and I have been friends for a while now. You think that when I come back to camp, she'd be happy to see me or something. I mean, you'd think that. But, I guess not. Instead, I practically get yelled at for eating LEFTOVERS. If I'm working hard at camp, I deserve the leftovers just as much as the staff who's getting paid. Needless to say, that made me feel horrible. I have no clue as to why she acted really bitchy toward me, but that made me feel shitty...

Not only is this week the last full session of the summer, it's prank week as well. SOOOOO, after the final councilfire of the session and the summer, I help take care of some stuff, including moving ALL of the tables from the INSIDE of the lodge to OUTSIDE, in front of the flagpole and in the meadow. I could have gone back to the room I'm sleeping in, and I could have conked out. BUT NO, I was asked to help, so I did. So on my way back to my room, there were two first year counselors walking back to the lodge I'm in with me. The two of them come up to the lodge and request to talk to my roommate--we'll call them CA (for counselor A) and CB (for counselor B)--and they weren't sure whether she was available or not, so I got her (the roommate) for CA and CB. I needed to switch shirts, so I went to my room and took my polo off (the nicey-ish pink one that's new) and stuck a tank top on. It didn't take very long at all; however, when I had walked back into the room with the others, my roommate, CA, and CB were in a huddle, discussing a prank that they're going to pull tonight/tomorrow morning... at approximately 5 in the morning. All I heard is "wake me up/come get me when you go to bed." which was followed by "so like 5ish?" and a "yeah."

So if my roommate is going to be woken up at 5, and I'm directly across from her in the room, I will MOST DEFINITELY be able to hear these two other counselors when they come in to wake her up. I figured that if I was going to be disturbed, I wanted to know what was going on. I asked, really nicely, what was going on... and apparently, they couldn't tell me. GREAT, thanks. Then, as my roommate and I were sitting on an island in the lodge's kitchen, CA beckoned to my roommate and CB, but didn't even care about that fact that I was sitting there. The three of them whispered to each other---right in from of me. So, I've felt super left out there, and then there were a bunch of other little times where the same kind of thing happened.... It's kind of more or less been happening like that all week.

The only people I felt as though I could talk to were a couple of friends that I know through Girl Scouts... two or three of them live in Ames and one lives in Nebraska. I'm sure I'm forgetting others, too, but what can I do about that, right? Anyways, they were CITs (counselors-in-training) who are three years younger than me. There's supposed to be some sort of boundary between CITs and counselors, but when I have nobody else to talk to, and I've sat with some of these girls at lunch in high school, I REALLY REALLY REALLY don't appreciate it when I'm told that there are boundaries between myself and them... especially by a counselor who probably fully realizes that I have contact with these girls outside of camp. I'm not stupid enough to tell all of camp's secrets; I wasn't even talking about camp. I was talking about my job with the democrats, and how that compares to working at camp.

I got yelled at for making a comparison---with a couple of my friends. With any other CIT, I probbaly wouldn't have talked about it, but when I have some friends that I can talk to (even if they are CITs), it should be apparent that I'm going to hate it when I'm told (by someone I can't stand, no less) to watch the "discussion." There was NO mention of my boyfriend (which is STRICTLY off limits at camp... I understand that though... but talking about working for the IA democrats??? It doesn't seem nearly as bad as talking about the bf...), so I was DEFINITELY within the boundaries of what I was supposed to be talking about. That was like, on Tuesday, though. I should put these mini-stories in chronological order, but right now, I REALLY don't feel like it.

As a camper here, I was taught that Tanglefoot would always welcome anybody with a warm welcome... and treat them nice. So why is it that I, a former camp staff member who is working my ass off... for no money... is not welcomed back and treated well by some of the "most respected" members of the camp staff???