Tag Archives: camp

The Boojum

Nationality: United States
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Asheville, NC
Performance Date: 04/10/2021
Primary Language: English

BACKGROUND: My informant, ES, was born in the US. Her parents are mostly Irish and her mom is part-Cuban. ES has worked as a camp counselor for a few years now. This piece is a bit of folklore from her specific camp, told to her by past camp counselors. It is encouraged for the counselors to share the story with the campers and is considered an essential part of the unofficial camp history.

CONTEXT: This piece was brought to my attention through a casual conversation with my friend who is currently a camp counselor at a camp in North Carolina.

ES: So Camp Henry in like 1800 was this thing called Sunburst. And it was like a timber yard, like a whole like huge business. And, um, there’s this woman who lived there named Annie (mumbles) Annie went missing and it was believed that she was taken by this man called the Boojum.

Me: Who’s that?

ES: Boojum wasn’t really a man. He was like this old decrepit, uh, human, like person. [Had a] huge beard and the tail of a cat. (laughs) Um, he lived up in the woods by camp or by Sunburst and, um, he would collect gems, diamonds and whatever was in the river from all of the timber stuff, I guess. So, um, basically when Annie went missing there, her family was certain that the Boojum took her. But the Boojum was very — no one knew where his cave was and some people didn’t believe he was real.

Me: Do you?

ES: (laughs) Apparently if you walk along the river at night, you can hear yells like “Annie where are you?” Oh! And apparently the Boojum was in love with Annie. That’s also an important piece of information. (laughs) I’m telling this very poorly. 

Me: (laughs) No, you’re good, you’re good!

ES: But the main parts are: Annie is missing, her (ghost?) family yells “Annie where are you?”, and the Boojum’s in love with her and collected like gems and diamonds. And she was one of his “diamonds”. So now allegedly the Boojum is still there. He just like chills out. Sometimes the kids see him. Um, we have like our hangout spot for the, for our counselors is also called the Boojum. Um, and it also means vagina. I think, like, the counselors use that as like the, um, code word.

Me: (laughs) Wait really? What?

ES: Yeah, he’s not like a scary guy. He’s actually kind of nice.

THOUGHTS: I think it’s interesting that almost every camp I’ve visited or talked about with friends has some version of a “camper kidnapped story” in order to keep current campers in check. In most cases, it’s a way to keep campers from wandering off the site, staying on the trail, or not tampering with potentially dangerous areas. But something that struck me about this story is that the Boojum isn’t necessarily a scary creature or something to be feared. The way ES presents him is as a mostly harmless resident of the camp.

Girl Scout Pins

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Chicago, IL
Performance Date: April 5th, 2021
Primary Language: English

Background

The informant, Katie, is a childhood friend of the interviewer. They grew up next door to each other and have been friends for sixteen years. They both went to girl scout camp every year from kindergarten to fifth grade.

Context

Katie discusses the sharing of girl scout pins at camp and the meaning behind it. 

Transcript 

“Every year we went to this girl scout camp, retreat thing. This particular year that I’m talking about it was held at White Pines ranch. Girl scout troops from all over Illinois came to this. Every year we do this pin exchange thing where we basically create our own pins and we create like a ton of them and then exchange them with other girls at the camp. Every troop creates a different kind of pin and they always have some story or meaning behind them. So our troop this particular year created s’more pins. So we took little pieces of tan felt, serving as the graham cracker, and glued on little pieces of brown felt for the chocolate. We then attached a white pom poms as the marshmallow and added another piece of tan felt for the second graham cracker. Then we glued these on to safety pins. Every girl in our troop made like twenty. The meaning behind them was two fold. S’mores were a very important part of our troop. At every campout and get together we would always make s’mores and sing songs and tell stories. The s’mores also represented our troop because many different kinds of girls could come together and make something incredible, our troop, just like how all these different kinds of ingredients came together to make something incredible, s’mores. Kind of cliche, I know, but we were like eight so… Anyway, the first night of the camp all the girls from all sorts of troops all over Illinois would come to the fire and we were each given a blank hat. Then you were asked to trade pins with all the other girls and put them on your hat. By the end of the night, you’d have this really cool decorated hat with all kinds of pins. I think I may still have my hat somewhere in my mom’s attic. It was a really fun activity because you got to meet with all sorts of other girls and talk to them and explain the meaning behind your pin and listen to them explain the meaning behind their pins.”

Thoughts

As someone who also participated in this activity, I thought it was very fun as a kid and still enjoy looking back on it. It is an interesting thing to study from a folklore perspective because we were able to spread stories of our troop to other girl scout troops through the ritual of giving and receiving pins. After exchanging the pins, we would sit back down with our troop and talk about which pins we got and continue to trade even more for the really cool ones. By giving someone a gift you are showing that you appreciate them and they are doing the same to you by giving you one back. This is a great way to make friends. It also allows us to learn about other girl scout troops and the history of their troops. 

Three Consecutive Days Riddle

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Business Student
Residence: South Bend, Indiana
Performance Date: 4/20/20
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

The following is transcribed from a conversation between myself, GK, and the informant, CZ. 

CZ: Can you name three consecutive days without using the words: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

GK: I don’t know. How?

CZ: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.

Background: The informant had heard this riddle from a camp counselor when he was 10 years old. He says it is his go-to riddle because the answer is so simple, yet so difficult to come to when proposed with the question for the first time. 

Context: The informant and I discussed this riddle over Face Time

My Thoughts: This riddle is very interesting, but its the way the informant came across it that catches my attention. I feel like it validates the fact that riddles are extremely popular within camp culture. This is the case because lots of camps do not allow kids to bring technology with them, and thus riddles serve as one of the best forms of entertainment during that time. This news was refreshing for me to hear, as it reminded me of my time at camp, and how much fun it was to be without technology for that portion of time. I also sometimes think about how riddles would be a lot more popular if technology wasn’t such a major part of our lives.

Duck Girl Song

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/21/2019
Primary Language: English

[The subject is CB. Her words are bolded, mine are not.]

Context: CB is one of my friends, and a sophomore student in college. Both of her parents are lawyers in the military, so she was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, but has also lived in Germany, Kansas, and Oregon. The following is a song that she learned when she was nine or ten years old from an American Girl Scout camp in Germany called Camp Lachenwald, which translates to “laughing woods.”

CB:
I’m an old duck rover from out in Montana
Round up them duckies and drive ‘em along
To a flooded corral where we bulldog and brand ‘em
Mosey on home just a-singin’ this song

Singin’ quack quack yippee-yay
Quack quack yippee-yo
Get along, little duckies
Get along real slow
It’s dirty and smelly and really don’t pay
But I’ll be a duck girl ‘til the end of my days.

On Saturday nights, I ride into town
On my short-legged pony with my hat pulled way down
But the boys don’t like duck girls and I can’t figure out why
No cowgirl could be more romantic than I

Singin’ quack quack yippee-yay
And quack quack yippee-yo
Get along, little duckies
Get along real slow
It’s dirty and smelly and really don’t pay
But I’ll be a duck girl ‘til the end of my days.

Thoughts: This song was sung entirely in an exaggerated Southern accent, which I thought was interesting especially because CB learned it while she was in Germany, albeit from other Americans. One thing I noticed was that the song was specific to a gender, but it led me to realize that most of the children’s folk songs I knew growing up were generally sung by girls more often than boys, even when the songs didn’t specify whether the singer was supposed to be a boy or a girl. I also feel that ducks are a common motif in children’s songs and games, like duck-duck-goose and the Five Little Ducks song. Ducks seem to be a symbol that adults associate with children because pictures of them commonly appear on baby clothes, but I suppose children also associate ducks with themselves because the songs they sing and the games they play often involve them.

Cool and Creamy

Nationality: Vietnamese
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/2/2019
Primary Language: English

Context:

My informant is a 20 year old student at the University of Southern California (USC). This conversation took place one night at Cafe 84, a place where many students at USC go to study at night. The informant and I sat at a table with two other people, and we were in an open space where there was a lot of background noise. In this account, he talks about a tradition that a student-run philanthropy (that holds a summer camp every year for the LAUSD community) does every year at our Spring Retreat called “Cool and Creamy”. Occasionally, one other person at our table, who is also a member of the organization,  interjected with her own comments. My informant learned this folklore just by attending Spring Retreat and watching counselors of past generations perform it. This is a transcription of his folklore, where he is identified as N, the girl that interjects is identified as L, and I am identified as K.

 

Text:

N: Okay, so “Cool and Creamy” is this voluntary tradition. It’s when two members, at Spring Retreat, perform this act in front of everyone as a part of the variety show, which is like a talent show, and they get, um, whipped cream, and they kind of sexualize it in a way… [laughs]

L: What, no not really!

 

(In the section directly below, when N speaks, I’ve recreated “Cool and Creamy” in the dialogue form that it’s actually performed, and the recreation is based off of my informant’s description. “Cool and Creamy” is essentially a ritualistic skit that involves a call and response between two people. Each person is given a bottle of canned whipped cream, and the goal of the tradition is essentially to put the whipped cream on the other person’s body parts until the can runs out. The names of the two people in here will be “A” and “B”.)

 

N: Yeah they sexualize, they totally sexualize “Cool and Creamy”! Yeah, yeah! They do!

      It goes like this:

A: Heyyyyyy B!

B: Heyyyyyy A!

      And then A goes like, “Do you like Cool and Creamy?” on a certain body part…. Like:

A: Do  YOU like Cool and Creamy on your elbows?

      And then B goes:

B: I LOVE Cool and Creamy on my elbows!

      And then A would spray the whipped cream on B’s elbows. And then it basically goes back and forth for like another five minutes, and it’s just kind of like a tradition. It’s um, like borderline funny. It’s almost It’s almost funny, mostly like, it’s mostly cause like we do it, but not funny because it’s funny.

K: How do you get chosen to do it?

N: Um, I think it’s just mostly older members… I don’t think people get selected to do it. But like, it’s something that like we’re guaranteed it’s going to show up at every single variety show.

K: Wait so then how do they pick who has to do it?

N: I think like two people just volunteer, like oh, which is a totally voluntarily process…. Yeah, people just volunteer… for some reason…

L: [laughs]

K: Why do people do it?

N: They do it because it’s tradition, you know? Sometimes you just gotta do it. Sometimes you just gotta do a little Cool and Creamy.

K: How did you learn this tradition?

N: How did I learn? They learn it from like past generations, so like, they’ll see that like the year before two counselors will do Cool and Creamy and then they’ll be like “Hey, this year we should do Cool and Creamy,” and then they’re like “Okay, let’s do Cool and Creamy” [laughs].

K: Why do people continue to do this?

N: Literally just because it’s tradition, it’s like literally just a weird thing that we do and it’s like “Okay, it’s weird, so we wanna just keep doing it every year… Forever.”

 

Thoughts:

This folklore is yet another example of a tradition that serves as a bonding experience. It’s not just the performers that become closer and more integrated into the organization; the camp counselors that simply just watch it happen also become a part of the “family.” As someone that is also a camp counselor in this organization, what’s particularly interesting to me about this tradition is it’s potential double reading. As my informant said, the tradition itself is not funny, but because it has sexual overtones (and just from the mere fact that we continue to do it every year) is what makes it funny. “Cool and Creamy” is fun because it’s weird and quirky, making is special to the organization, but the sexualization of the tradition also serves an ironic purpose that creates greater bonding potential. For example, the work that camp counselors do are meant to be very pure and good-intentioned, and when we’re around the kids it’s completely inappropriate to make any jokes that are foul or sex-related.

When we’re around the kids, we’re seen as leaders, role models, and adults, but this means that we have to keep our identity as college students hidden. Therefore, at Spring Retreat, when it’s only camp counselors with no kids around, we are given a chance to meld our camp counselor identities together with our college student identities, and thus comes the result of sexualizing things that, in a kids eyes, would just be seen as pure fun or just a few counselors messing around. Furthermore, “Cool and Creamy” is fun because it’s not explicitly dirty, but it has plausible deniability as a sexual joke. We can even see that my informant debated with L on whether or not the tradition is actually sexualized or if the sexualized interpretation is a way to trick counselors into making them feel bad for having a dirty mind.

“Cool and Creamy” is a perfect example of camp folklore being used to bond counselors together before summer camp happens, making counselors feel much closer so that, when summer camp comes around, everyone works together much more as a collective group. Because relationships are closer and everyone has had this shared experience, communication during camp becomes much easier. Counselors are much more comfortable around each other, thus making a much more successful summer camp than what would be without having this shared experience.