Stories for Halloween #1

Fat Camp

Dear Mom and Dad,

Camp is fun. They don’t make me swim or run. They tell me I can walk if I’m not ready to swim or run, so that’s pretty cool. They don’t always let us eat candy and stuff, but when we work really hard we get candy from the counselor that’s in charge. They call it cheat food. It’s way funny when one of the other guys gets to cheat, because they always throw up after the next activity! We always laugh because it’s hilarious. And they don’t usually give us chocolate or anything because it melts too fast. They do give us a lot of granola bars and pop tarts and stuff, though, so it’s still worth it.

Sorry if you’ve been waiting for a letter all summer. I guess they don’t want us to use too much paper or talk to anyone outside of camp very much. It’s not that we can’t talk to anyone, they just don’t like it. They’re nice about it, but you can tell they aren’t okay with it.

We had a couple of bands come up and play some live music for us so for our dancing activities, which was cool. I liked the punk band because they were really fast and it was fun to watch them sing and play their instruments. And they played fast enough that some of us ran around the gym as fast as we could. We were way tired after that. We also had a couple of people come up and talk to us about stuff. Like, one guy talked to us about eating healthy food, and where food comes from and why it’s important to be healthy. Another guy works in a prison and told us why we should learn things and pay attention in school. He kept talking about guys at his jail who killed people and that was way creepy. He was a really weird guy. I didn’t hear everything he said because I wasn’t really paying attention because one kid was joking around the whole time. He wasn’t loud or anything, I mean the speaker never stopped, he just kept joking around with us, making fun of what the guy was saying and everything. His name is Julian. I can’t remember the speaker’s name, though.

They have really good food here, though. It’s really nice and it’s tastes really good. The first night we had a lot of different foods in a buffet. They call the buffet table "the trough", because they said we can pig out when we go to it. (I had to ask how to spell buffet and trough.) I don't know what they mean, but it's cool because we get to eat anything we want. They had steak with garlic sauce, potato wedges with bacon, cheese and those green things we like, they had tons of different kinds of pizza, and they had desserts like chocolate pudding with whipped-cream and chocolate flakes on top, strawberry-rhubarb pie with the weave crust on top, and peanut-butter bars that were way thick with real chocolate bars over them. It was all really, really good! Our meals since have been good, too, but that first one was way good. 

We kept hearing rumors that there was something weird about the camp counselors, because they kept looking at some of the guys really closely. It was kind of creepy, until they told us they were looking for the camper who showed the most improvement and had the best attitude, because they choose one kid out of the whole group to be a special guest at the end of the summer, because there’s a big feast. They called it V.I.P. I wanted to be the kid they chose, because everyone was saying that the winner gets to go into an awesome hidden room that had everything, like video games, a giant trampoline, a huge slide that went into a ball-pit, and other cool stuff. All of the camp counselors get to hang out in that room all the time, so the VIP kid gets to hang out with everyone while the rest of us don’t. We all get a really big meal again, though. This time I heard there was a huge chocolate fountain with bananas and twinkies and everything. And there’s a giant pizza that takes up a whole one of those circle tables, with everything on it, and there’s a huge sandwich that’s, like, 12 feet long. I don’t know what else there’s going to be, but it sounds like fun.

They chose the kid. It wasn’t me, it was stupid Julian. He was laughing and bragging about all the stuff he was going to do while we were going to be jealous losers just eating food in the cafeteria. They told him to pack up his stuff, too, because the VIP kid gets to go home right after the feast at the end of the summer while the rest of us have to stay until the end, which is only, like, three more days. But he won’t have to help clean up and wash everything with the rest of us, so that makes me jealous, too. I don’t feel like cleaning up all of this crap.

Julian packed up and one of the counselors went and got him this morning so they could load his stuff up so he could go home. He must have taken a long time, because one of the guys said that he saw Julian walking around in the cafeteria and stealing some of the food they were setting out for us. He’s a total pig. But the guy that saw him said Julian went back outside to keep packing up his stuff. He probably took so long because he was being a pig.

We didn’t see Julian anymore, but we heard that he was already in the hidden room with a few of the counselors. When we came into the cafeteria, there was a whole ton of food. There wasn’t the big chocolate fountain, but there was the big pizza and the giant sandwich. There was also a lot of different cakes, pies, donuts, candy. And there was a ton of meat, too. Everyone could smell it cooking all day, so it must have been one of those whole pigs they cook over a fire, or something. It was really, really good! There were mini pulled-pork sandwiches, there were hamburgers with huge strips of bacon, there was tons of ham--it looked kind of weird, but I heard one kid say that the guy who cooked it was from Fiji or something, and that’s how they cut ham and stuff. It tasted really good.

While everyone was cleaning everything up, one of the counselors said Julian left with a Playstation 4 AND an Xbox One, a TV, tons of toys and new clothes and stuff. They had to load a truck up with all of the stuff he won. I hope they choose me, next year!

They finally came to get our letters, and everything, so this should have gotten home by now. I might be home before this letter gets there, though. Either way, it was really fun!

We should have pulled-pork sandwiches when I get home, but I don’t think they’ll be as good as ours were at camp.

Love,

Craig